YouTube’s Pre-Game Super Bowl Supremecy

By New Year’s Day, YouTube (which turns 10 this year) was already awash with pre-release Super Bowl spots as marketing seek to maximise their 30-second $4.5m investment by engaging earlier, generating buzz, building social currency and developing deeper storytelling narratives. With four days to go before the Big Game kicks offs on 1 February, more than half of NBC’s Super Bowl advertisers had pre-released their commercials on YouTube, including the billion dollar NFL partners like A-B InBev and PepsiCo, to the Super Bowl spot buyers such as BMW, Lexus, Mercedes, Old Spice, Toyota and T-Mobile etc. Even the few remaining pre-release sceptics who are waiting until the Big Game kicks off to air their spots have all rolled out some form of YouTube preview, teaser, cut-down or trailer. Despite the explosion of competitor webfilm platforms, other social channels and the vast array of messaging apps, the Google-owned online video behemoth retains its title as the primary platform for pre-game activation. Indeed, YouTube’s Super Bowl role even sees it hold its own 2015 Halftime Show streamed live on its AdBlitz Haltime Show channel – thus competing with the NFL’s official Halftime Show sponsored by Pepsi and fronted this year by Lenny Kravitz and Katy Perry. Furthermore, just a few days before Super Bowl 2015, the NFL even announced its own official partnership with YouTube in the form of an NFL channel on the platform. Click to download full Insight Briefing.