Slashdot Mirror
Super Bowl Ads: Worth the Price Or Waste of Time?
samzenpus writes "Every year companies are willing to dish out big bucks to reach tens of millions of consumers with their Super Bowl ads. With an average price tag of $4 million for a 30-second commercial, this year is no exception. We've seen: beer obsessed frogs, field goal kicking horses, celebrities drinking various beverages, explosions of all sizes, homages to 1984, and day trading babies in the past. Since talking about the commercials has become almost as popular as the game itself, here's a place to do just that. What have you liked and what do you think would have been better left on the cutting room floor."
I'd like to see even more homages to 1984.
The superbowl doesn't change that.
Neither: Waste of Money.
I live in constant fear of the Coming of the Red Spiders.
slashdot news for nerds^H^H^H^H^H americans.
My take on Superbowl commercials is the exact same as the rest of the year. Namely, I avoid commercials wherever I can. Got rid of cable back in 2010, in favor of Netflix and other streaming options. Not looking back.
Waste of money now that getting a 'viral video' on youtube can get you much more bang for your not $4 million bucks.
Those of us who've suffered Slashdot for more than the last decade should be 100% embarrassed that we still come here with shit like this being posted.
Can anyone recommend good IT (systems) sites? I've already bypassed most of the science articles on Slashdot with PhysOrg.
Serious question. I don't think I've ever seen it. It's some kind of sports thing right?
The 80s called ... they want their store back
Are the ads a donation?
Supper bowl? Is that what I eat soup out of or what I feed the dog in? Both? Ads for it must be a waste of time...
What is that? It wasn't on my tv so at least in my case it was a waste of dollars.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
It's no secret that Slashdot's traffic has been stagnant at best, if not decreasing. Alexa's and Compete's numbers don't paint a rosy picture. Their estimates aside, I think it's obvious that Slashdot's popularity and influence has been on a decline for some time now.
Shitty, irrelevant stories like these do not help. This story is purely about marketing. There's absolutely no technological aspect to it. Nor are science or math involved. This story does not belong on Slashdot, plain and simple.
This is the kind of crap we can find at reddit. We come here to Slashdot specifically because we don't want to see stories like these!
The new ultra-shitty beta site sure doesn't help the situation. Now we get to see irrelevant, unwanted stories displayed worse than they currently are, with discussion that's much harder to follow, and damn near impossible to participate in.
Slashdot likely won't ever regain the influential position it once had. Shitty stories like this and the shitty beta site will make that a certainty, though. They'll continue to drive away the few remaining users.
Stop wasting my time with your plebian nonsense!
Ads are not sold by the second, but rather by a price per thousand viewers, known as CPM or Cost Per Thousand. On a CPM basis the Super Bowl ads are equal or below the cost of regular ads... If you want to reach a lot of people they can be an effective part of a marketing mix.
http://www.hawknest.com/
I think this Audi commercial is hilarious and hope the word "Doberhuahua" is now used for "something that sounds like a good idea, but would actually be very bad." Like, "That Unity interface is a Doberhuahua."
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
I've long since quit drinking, I'm not buying any new technology gadgets or switching connectivity providers of any sort, and pretty much not spending money on anything because of tax season. I don't even care about the halftime show. Its a confirmed waste.
Well someone has their panties in a wringer don't they. You don't have to read the article you know. Honestly there has been stuff on of Slashdot of late that would not have made the cut a few years ago, but to say it is stooping to the reddit level is a little to steep. Maybe it is just the penalty of success. Of course Slashdot is a commercial site owned by dice. com and as such is inherently trying to draw more eyes toward its advertising.
Up here in Canada, we don't get these "Superbowl" commercials everyone talks about.
We either get our own pathetic Canadian attempts, or normal commercials (the same ones you'd see any other time). 10 years ago you'd maybe get 90% of the Superbowl commercials playing through the stream from the 'States, but not anymore- everything gets ripped out and replaced with Canadian crap.
So instead, if I want to see what a $5M commercial looks like, I have to watch some lame ass retarded "commercial" show that is filled with so much errant crap (and even more commercials in-between) that it hardly makes it worth it.
I would think that with the way corporations own the US government these days, they'd want their commercials to be seen internationally just for the hell of it.
If Slashdot pushes through with their beta plans, it will be the end of the site as we know it.
Looks like a "-1, Very Painful Truth" mod to me!
It hasn't reached reddit levels of stupid yet, but movement in that direction is a valid complaint. I guess it depends how you define 'success.'
why start now.
Definitely wasted advertising on folks like myself.
Until they get AdBlock for TV I'll continue to download the Superbowl from Pirate Bay so that I don't have to watch the ads.
Three Squirrels
I go to great lengths to avoid ads and I'm flabbergasted when people actually seek them out or discuss the latest in some mind-numbing conversation. But when one is forced upon me and I know that it's gonna pay for itself several times over because enough drones are falling for it my head is friggin about to explode!
I think you meant Superb Owl.
...it and football as a whole, honestly. IMO a big majority of football culture is that of ignorant and/or dumb, brutish people.
It would be nice if we had two columns for this: for and against. It's a great example of capitalism at its best, but purely based on American necessity for buying shit we don't need. I record the damn game just so I can fast forward through it to ensure I don't get to see some of the commercials online. Companies spend more on this game than they would toward a generous cause to help humanity. Too bad helping humanity isn't profitable...
than the crap being spewed over the air during the game...
http://blog.seattlepi.com/mari...
Remember "News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters"? Help make it a reality again! http://soylentnews.org
the one you could buy a soldering iron at. now, its like you described. just another consumer electronics store trying to be Best Buy
I bought a soldering iron at one a few months ago. Used it to fix a truck's instrument panel.
It was kind of a mess, but they still sold what I needed.
A big dish? And someone pays millions to put adds on it?
Open road and a motorcycle starts off down it, all you hear is the noise of the bike as the gears are shifted.
Buuuuuud - Wissssssssss - Eeeeeeerrrrr - Beeeerrrrrrrr.
The Super Bowl is not only the largest US TV audience of the year, it's a festive occasion when people gather around with friends to watch the game AND the halftime show AND the ads. The "best and worst SB ads" is a big topic for discussion the following week (along with the related "was that spot worth $X million of shareholders money"?), and you don't have to follow NFL football to participate. You just have to watch the ads, and lots of people do watch pretty intently for that reason.
You can tell that the ones that are worth the money - it's not just a creative burst from the ad agency or the usual crowd pleasers (dopey animals wandering around, cute babies, sexy women and men wearing skimpy outfits) but something that meshes with the message that the company is trying to deliver. A good example was "Imported from Detroit" starring Eminem, a couple years ago I think. Yeah, it had a celebrity and good direction, but it also delivered a message that people talked about afterwards. That wouldn't have been nearly as effective if it were delivered as a typical media buy in mid-February.
Super Bowl: Worth the Price Or Waste of Time?
"stuff that matters"? Whether some multi-bazzilion dollar oligopolist run corporation wastes 4 million or not advertising during a football game?
Absolutely. It's the ONLY time of the year you can buy a commercial and if it's moderately funny have people actually go out and LOOK for your commercial to see it again. Where else can you get your commercial to be talk around the water cooler? We're still talking about 1984 30 years later....
Just before DotCom became "DotBomb".
http://www.businessinsider.com...
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
It's completely irrelevant. Dice was completely clueless when they acquired slashdot. They've turned it into a corporate-loving, irrelevant, average, mediocre, wannabe-like-everyone-else site. Slashdot has a unique audience and which Dice has completely ignored, and they've directed this place like every other millenial-driven ADHD twitter clone.
Money kills good things. Dice are fucking idiots. Thanks for fucking this one up guys.
Yeah, because it's not like Slashdot had stories about the Superbowl during its heyday.
Better known as 318230.
Fuck you Dice jerkoffs, this is the last time I ever visit Slashdot.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R... Look up "M" in the table. In the dim dark past, probably before you were born, printers were using "M" to mean "thousand". And I too have been on Slashdot for a fair amount of time, for what it's worth.
They could have chosen the Constitution for that one long-ass commercial that preceded the Super Bowl, but no, they use the declaration of independence. Then, get this, they cut out all the bits about the 'savage indians' & expect no one to notice. I'm no fan of centuries-old racism, but I kinda feel like they're treating a centuries-old document like a photo of Stalin & his ghost friends. Stalin has ghost friends right?
Its one of the last bastions adverts have in a war wages by time shifting/dvrs/netflicks/piratebay/cord cutting
Well, I think I was less offended by my least favorite registrar's ad this year, but still moving my business away from them.
Don't think Sonos ad worked too well; owning several, I understood, but it was a bit of a leap.
Other than that... Did you see the cuuuute little puppies...
It's completely irrelevant. Dice was completely clueless when they acquired slashdot. They've turned it into a corporate-loving, irrelevant, average, mediocre, wannabe-like-everyone-else site. Slashdot has a unique audience and which Dice has completely ignored, and they've directed this place like every other millenial-driven ADHD twitter clone.
Money kills good things. Dice are fucking idiots. Thanks for fucking this one up guys.
When can we begin to copy/past funny cat pictures and link to recipes and "life hacks"?
Microsoft stitched together a short Super Bowl ad that (IMO) was less than the sum of its longer individual films, most of which would get you to tear up.
No... Money laundering. How else can you wash 4 mil every 30 seconds?
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Sure, but does Netcraft confirm it???
"Go to CNN [for a] spell-checked, fact-checked summary" -- CmdrTaco
Superbowl ads reminded me it's never ok.
The corporation that paid for the ad didn't pay the $4 million because they thought they could get ROI on the advert.
They paid for it so they could pad their expenses. You know, HOLLYWOOD ACCOUNTING, and all that.
Yep, and they seem to be banking on this SlashCloud and SlashBI, etc. SlashBullShit as of late so I bet they're going in the "original content" with minimal user interaction/minimal community direction. I bet the slashdot.org domain will be up for cheap in a couple years when DICE has finished looting the last corpse here so if someone still has an installation of SlashCode laying around we could probably get the site back up to speed pretty quickly in that eventuality.
It must suck to be Malda and see your website baby all grown up to be a junkie whore like this.
I, for one, am looking forward to the inevitable
Most of the ads that had celebrities in them ended up being for products I don't want. I can't really think of any that were interesting and for products that I have any interest in purchasing.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
I thought this was all about "The Biggest Concert of the Year" where some remarkably mediocre musicians are promoted as though they actually have talent.
Oh, and BTW... there might be a football game between some over-rated commercials.
This event has become nothing but an enormous amount of hype.
An effective "democracy" creates the illusion the people have a say in their government.
game over before it began. dont know the numbers yet but i am sure this was no ratings winner for the nfl and fox.
What would have been better left on the cutting room floor? Denver's offensive line.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
beta sucks, yes, but another problem is the stalking of commenters. I've experimented posting stuff under my own ID, and as an A/C. One gets mod bombed, the other ignored. Fix this and you will get a lot more participation in threads.
It has always been a waste of time to say anything anti-Apple, but in the last few years it has become a waste of time to be anti-Microsoft, anti-Google, anti-IBM, etc.
Summary: Too many 1% down-modders, and corporate-backed modders protecting corporate interests.
Down-mods are censorship -- get rid of them. Keep the up-mods.
Is what my 10 year old asked. Got me, I don't know is what I answered. Several were just plain stupid, didn't know what they were selling, obviously someone had millions of dollars to waste that they didn't know what to do with.
Try again. All the stories you linked to had a computer/technology aspect to them. The first was about a render farm, and the next two were about dot-com ads.
This story (which, by the way, is posted by samzenpus , and is written by samzenpus , but still says 'samzenpus writes...', which is strange) is just about ad economics. It should be in Ad Age, not here.
Friends of mine do a party where we do record it, watch the commercials, and fast-forward over the game, occasionally stopping if the football's interesting.
Since I'm writing this afterwards, it's not a spoiler, but while this year's commercials were below average, they were a lot better than the game.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Agreed. Even better than half-time show even though I didn't like that music genre. In fact, last year's power outage made the game better and interesting!!
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
It's amazing how the half-time adverts are a such a big talking point for Americans.
Ads or not, it's the one game we watch as a family. This year I watched with more interest than in the past - and it was the first one I recall watching with just the wife and our two kids (not at a friends house, etc). It was fun, made a pizza and chips run at halftime (we were gonna go to a friends house, but wife kinda sick so we stayed home). Watched on OTA in HD - the picture looked great. Being a captive audience, the price was paid whether ads were lousy or not. Not my money :)
Had fun explaining some of the rules to wifey (4 attempts to go 10 yrds, e.g. 3rd & 13, 2 point conversion). When I first turned on the game and saw 26 players my first thought was 26! (factorial) and my ADHD was overwhlemed!! But oh yeah - 13*2 players - that is a lot of variables, but this is 2 teams... Reduce that to a few basic tactics (QB run, QB throw long|short, QB hand ball to another player, etc) and I enjoyed watching the tactical part of it.
Now to watch a game every Sunday - not sure I am willing to give up fixing/building/study time for that.
While Reddit's /r/science is comparable to slashdot, try e.g. /r/compsci , /r/netsec , /r/math or /r/machinelearning , /r/askscience, /r/askhistorians. I guarantee you'll find something interesting on the smaller subreddits.
Something else for geeks? try /r/lego.
you would think that the money involved would bring creativity, but it's quite the opposite. Keep in mind ad agencies are slaves to their clients (the days of renegade "mad men" are long gone, and I suspect their gonzo reputation of yesteryear was a fabrication) and as a result the typical creative process is:
--Look at the ad trade magazines from last year.
--See which ads "did the best" which really means, which ads all the other advertisers ranked the highest.
--Do exactly that same ad, but tweak it for whatever pop culture thing is hitting as of six months ago.
--The metric ad agencies give to their clients is not how much product got moved-- it's what "rating" their superbowl ad got.
The superbowl is a money laundering scheme for advertisers-- it's very incestuous and the only real beneficiaries of the superbowl are the ad agencies. Certainly not football fans.
Since talking about the commercials has become almost as popular as the game itself, here's a place to do just that.
Exactly what the advertisers want.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
It was a corporate-loving, irrelevant, average, mediocre, wannabe-like-everyone-else site long before Dice bought it.
Or rather, against them.
With ads being so expensive, it tells me that the product they are trying to advertise are overpriced since they can afford those ads.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Absolutely. Slashdot is the worst social news site (where people actually discuss the stories).
Except, of course, all the others.
Help! I'm a slashdot refugee.
Not only does Apple tie you into their eco system, they block pretty much everything else they can, giving you almost no freedom. I don't understand why Apple fanboys often ignore reality in this. As for privacy concerns they are no better than the others. Also spam can be turned off.
With an AFC loss 1 point shy of the NFC Bears blowout of 1986, there's no point in watching the matchup if it's going to be a foregone conclusion for the next decade (similar to super bowls 19-31). Of course advertisers losing (huge piles of) money while other viewers reach the same conclusion brings a wicked smile to my face. It's not like there's isn't a ton of other entertainment options available.
I suppose the key difference was that back then that wasn't the only content. These days about half the stories are just some regurgitated press release or clickbait bullshit. I do try to vote it down, but you can't vote up non-existent stories.
Maybe the internet itself has changed. There is still good technical info out there, but somehow it seems harder to find. You would think that search engines would make it easier now, but a lot of it has migrated to forums and social networking where it is lost in a sea of floaters and used condoms that spew out of effluent pipes labelled "content". Everything on the internet used to be relevant to nerds, now most of it isn't.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
According to Alexa Slashdot is most popular in India. Is that really true? Most people here seem to be American.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Fork it.
soylentnews.org
But Budwieser have invaded YouTube with a commerical that can't be skipped play before EVERY FUCKING SONG! HATE! HATE! HATE! HATE! HATE! HATE! HATE! HATE! HATE! HATE! HATE!
How is it a legendary nerd news site missed this? I practically *squeed* when a new ad for GoldieBlox came on (complete with another great song parody). I know they won their ticket into the big Superb Owl ad frenzy courtesy of Intuit, but it was so awesome to see them get this level of exposure.
Also, their spot was spot-on and very well done!
Defending IP by destroying access to it? That makes sense, RIAA/MPAA. Go to the corner until you can play nice!
we'll never see these commercials again.
Why not? I was under the impression that the advertisers either A. made them available to watch through the Internet, or B. ordered their legal teams to tolerate fans doing so. Super Bowl ads are like movie trailers in this respect.
It's no secret that Slashdot's traffic has been stagnant at best, if not decreasing.
I wouldn't be surprised. Ever since timothy took over, the posts, both for writing and content, went the way of the shitter. You need an editor who knows about technology, not some wanna be nerd who doesn't understand the summaries he/she writes. No wit, no humor, no knowledge, awesome recipe for a site editor. Not.
Also, people are not stupid. They know an article from an advertisement. Not tagging slashvertisements as ads is an asshole thing.
.
Please note that those stories featured technological aspects, such as "Red Hat and the Superbowl", and the predictions of simulations on the winner. Today's story features none of the Slashdot-twist.
I'm not sure they were worth the expense on THIS superbowl. Most of the people, at the party where I was, stopped watching after the halftime show. Many started going home midway through the third quarter. This year, advertisers definitely were not reaching as many people as they would have liked.
Proverbs 21:19
But has Netcraft confirmed it?
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
Neither: Waste of Money.
Exactly! An epic waste of money.
To those that say who cares? The share holders care, I care, and you should care.
Share holders should care that their companies waste MILLIONS of dollars for a piss poor 30 second ad. The same ad could be run at a slightly different time for a small fraction of the cost. How much money did taxpayer-bailed-out GM/Chevrolet waste on that shit? As a tax payer, you should care.
I care that the American Cancer Society, that I have contributed to in the past, blew MILLIONS of dollars of donated money that was intended for use in cancer research, on an EPICALLY pointless Super Bowl ad that will NOT generate nearly as much donations as it wasted!
https://www.drfuhrman.com/libr...
"Scientific evidence suggests that the re-sensitization of taste nerves takes between 30 and 90 days of consistent exposure to less stimulating foods. This means that for several weeks, most people attempting this change will experience a reduction in eating pleasure. This is why modern foods present such a devastating trap--as most of our citizens are, in effect, "addicted" to artificially high levels of food stimulation! The 30-to-90-day process of taste re-calibration requires more motivation--and more self-discipline--than most people are ever willing to muster.
Tragically, most people are totally unaware that they are only a few weeks of discipline away from being able to comfortably maintain healthful dietary habits--and to keep away from the products that can result in the destruction of their health. Instead, most people think that if they were to eat more healthfully, they would be condemned to a life of greatly reduced gustatory pleasure--thinking that the process of Phase IV will last forever. In our new book, The Pleasure Trap, we explain this extraordinarily deceptive and problematic situation - and how to master this hidden force that undermines health and happiness."
See also:
http://www.drfuhrman.com/libra...
Also, advice to eat home-made food:
http://www.thersa.org/events/r...
http://www.thersa.org/events/v...
"We're all time poor, and a lot of people are money poor too,"
Sadly, so true... Yet we in the USA so often ironically claim somehow we are "rich". As Iain Banks said in the Culture series: "Money is a sign of poverty".
Here is some advice on building a healthier and happier society from cultures that achieved that: http://www.bluezones.com/
Yet, adapting that for a world of "pleasure traps" or "supernornal stimuli" or "the acceleration of addictiveness" in the 21st century is a huge challenge.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S...
http://www.amazon.com/Supernor...
http://paulgraham.com/addictio...
I think regulations and politics can help with that, but it has to probably be of a deeper more thoughtful form than much of what passes as mainstream politics today. Things like a basic income, an expanded gift economy, internet-empowered democratic decision making, rethinking education to move beyond "compulsory schooling", reconstructing our dwellings and towns and cities to be more walkable and human-friendly and sustainable and healthy, and so on...
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
The horse kicked an extra point.
Of course is as relevant a fact as the post/story itself.
yeah for those that are new, slashdot superbowl ad threads are an annual tradition that was codified in 2000 during the dot com bubble, featuring big-ticket flashes in the pan such as pets.com.
I am going to cut AC some slack on this one. Without trying to sound like the old man yelling at a cloud, there was a time when reading the headline alone on this site exposed you to new things. I remember thinking that I had no clue what the headline was referrring to which would entice me to read on and broaden my understanding. Now it is littered with crap like this and oooh Iphone this and and Android that. Oooooh shiny, happy happy. You still get a nugget of good stuff here once in a while and the discussions are still leaps and bounds better then anything I have seen on reddit, but overall this site has taken a dive and is getting more reddit like every year.
It must suck to be Malda and see your website baby all grown up to be a junkie whore like this.
Where you been? I been telling you people about the decline of Slashdot for the last 10 years. Well before Taco ran.
They had a funny little commercial (it was actually 2 back to back, doubling up because "a ford fusion hybrid has (roughly) double the gas mileage of the average vehicle.") ...but then it occured to me...they spent at least 4 million dollars to run that 30 second spot (it might have even been two spots). In 2013, they sold less than 40,000 fusion hybrids. Assuming similar sales this year, that means the owners paid about $100 *each* for that commercial!
I see the gay moderators are out in force. Hi, fellas!
Maybe the internet itself has changed. There is still good technical info out there, but somehow it seems harder to find.
Yep. My dad had the same theory about television. Back in the day, there were three channels of content. There is still the same amount of information being broadcast, but it is spread somewhere amongst the 700 channels available.
Back in the day, you could find what you wanted on the internet without having to use google. These days, you have to use google and you have to hope that the site with the content you want is better at promoting their content than the redirectors are at promoting their lack of content.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
The GP didn't say anything about including food with sugar that naturally occurs. GP said to ban ADDING sugar. I agree that it's a rather extreme step, but not nearly as extreme as your claim that they suggested banning anything that contains sugar.
Even worse--this is a dupe!
is this article on /. ?
They paid for it so they could pad their expenses. You know, HOLLYWOOD ACCOUNTING, and all that.
Unless there are kickbacks for $4 million dollar ads, what is the point? Money spent is money spent.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
GoDaddy.
Well, at least it wasn't stupid like last year.
Like many people, I left the Superb Owl at the beginning of the third quarter. I didn't even see the Budwisser Ad, although I saw it later. That was a cat video like you's see on You Tube only staring puppies and horses.
I kept saying "Huh?" to most of the ads I saw. Many of them just didn't make sense to me, and of course they seemed full of nonsequitors. Maybe they were too ambitious and most of their message was lost on the editing floor. I know my metaphor is now anachronistic, so maybe the content was catted to /dev/null instead. But it seemed to me that they were trying to cram 10 lbs of shit into 5 lib bags.
I would say that they wasted their money on two accounts, one is trying to do too much with too little and the other is that the Super Bowl is often a mismatch that reults in a boring football game that many viewers leave before it is done, so the advertisers lose. I'm not too sad for them since I dislike the marketed and propagandised media we now have, anyway. Death to Marketing!