The Super Bowl is now less than two weeks away. And every year, viewers build up almost as much excitement for the advertisements as the game itself.
The advertisers lucky (and rich) enough to have spots during the Super Bowl know this—it’s perhaps the only day of the year when people are actually trying to pay attention to the commercials as much as possible. This means it’s on them to come up with creative, unique ways to really make an impression on viewers amidst a slew of big-time advertising competition.
Related: Advertisers Gear Up for NFL Playoffs
In recent years, brands have gone so far as to start creating trailers or previews for their Super Bowl ads. That’s right—trailers for commercials. Who would have thought?
Now, YouTube has brought back AdBlitz, which gives viewers a single platform on which they can view all Super Bowl advertisements and teasers before the game even happens. It gives advertisers an extra opportunity to capture viewer attention, and gives Google a way to get in on the hype as well.
Building the buzz through AdBlitz
AdBlitz has been around for several years now and was initially pitched as a way for advertisers paying big bucks for a Super Bowl timeslot ($5 million for just 30 seconds) to maximize the value of their ads.
To some, putting an ad on AdBlitz might seem like a waste, as in the past, a lot of the fun of watching the commercials on game day was not having a clue of what was coming up next. However, Google has produced data showing the platform can actually bolster the investment of a Super Bowl ad before and after the game.
According to YouTube, uploading the ads early does not actually spoil the surprise for fans. In fact, brands that post their ads on AdBlitz have been shown to end up with more than twice as many video views and more than three times as many shares across social media platforms than if they would have simply run the ad during the game and posted it on YouTube afterward.
For a great example of this phenomenon, look no further than the 2015 Budweiser “Lost Dog” commercial, which drew more than 18 million views even before game day.
Almost all content on AdBlitz comes from official Super Bowl advertisers, with the only exceptions being original content made by YouTube for the Super Bowl, featuring some of the most popular YouTubers.
It is going to be interesting to see how the state of Super Bowl advertising continues to evolve in the coming years as marketers find more ways to get the most out of their investments.