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Super Bowl Ads: Worth the Price Or Waste of Time?

Posted by samzenpus on from the did-you-see-that? dept.

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."

33 of 347 comments (clear)

  1. Ads are toxic. by Snufu · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The superbowl doesn't change that.

    1. Re:Ads are toxic. by ozmanjusri · · Score: 4, Funny
      What is this superbowl thing? I've seen a lot of references to it lately, but not a lot of explanation.

      From the online chatter, it seems to be a celebration of TV adverts and (junk?) food, so I assume the super bowl being referred to is an oversized container for fried chicken wings etc. Is that correct?

      I understand why the majority of Americans would be so wholeheartedly involved in such an event, but it seems a bit irresponsible to an outside observer. With all your obesity, diabetes and heart issues, I think it'd be better for your nation's health to steer these sort of events towards less sedentary pursuits.

      Why not include a healthy sporting event in the day's activities, for example?

      --
      "I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
    2. Re:Ads are toxic. by epyT-R · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Originally, it was about football.. Now it's about rampant consumerism. Of course, europeans and aussies would know nothing about rabid obsession over soccer...

    3. Re:Ads are toxic. by ChunderDownunder · · Score: 3, Insightful

      aussies would know nothing about rabid obsession over soccer...

      Damn straight. World cup notwithstanding, soccer is a summer curiosity here, watched mainly by migrants from Europe and their grandchildren.

    4. Re:Ads are toxic. by Hamsterdan · · Score: 4, Funny

      Well, we do have curling in Canada

      --
      I've got better things to do tonight than die.
    5. Re:Ads are toxic. by Eskarel · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Advertising is a way to let people who may be interested in purchasing your product or using your service that you exist, nothing more, nothing less. On a fundamental level, there's nothing wrong with it.

      There are certainly issues with some ads, in terms of the products they sell, the stereotypes they reinforce, and in some cases the veracity of the claims that they make(though outside political advertising regulation keeps that sort of thing largely in check. There can also be issues with the tools advertisers use to reach us and in some ways the degree to which they manipulate us, but that's not the same as saying "Ads are toxic".

      That kind of attitude is so pointlessly naive it's ridiculous. Are signs on shops toxic? Yellow pages advertisements? Websites for products or services? Review Sites? Slashdot Articles? All are a form of advertising.

    6. Re:Ads are toxic. by Opportunist · · Score: 3, Funny

      Please stay on topic. We're discussing sports here.

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
  2. Worth the Price Or Waste of Time? by Amorymeltzer · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Neither: Waste of Money.

    --
    I live in constant fear of the Coming of the Red Spiders.
  3. slashdot... by TitusGroan8856 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    slashdot news for nerds^H^H^H^H^H americans.

    1. Re:slashdot... by tlhIngan · · Score: 3, Informative

      I don't get it. Same thing here in Canada, people complain they don't see the same ads as shown in the US. I hate commercials, I change the channel or pick up my phone when the commercials come on. It blows my mind that people get excited about them.

      That's because most ads are dull and boring and played to saturation.

      But when ads cost $4M per 30 second slot, it tends to bring out the most creative because it's costing a LOT of money to run the ad, so using it to run a plain jane ad is stupid because you can buy timeslots for 1/40th the price every other day of the week.

      So some of the best ads you see will be on during the superbowl, and that's it very few are run again, unless they're up for awards (in which case they have to run on regular TV).

      Plus, it's all about ratings. The C3 numbers for the superbowl are huge (Commercial+3), which is how ad prices are set. Neilsen sells those numbers so stations can set ad rates. The "public" numbers of L, L+SD, and L+7 are "given away" to show how popular a show is. The difference is that the C numbers subtract out the non-commercial content from the ratings (i.e., the programming).

      Sports is one of the highest rated shows on TV, and outside of sports, only TBBT really scores anything significant, but well short of sports. The superbowl pretty much feeds the idea - the sport brings in the audience which raises rates, the raised rates bring up the ante on what ads can do because no one wants to epend millions running the same old ad you can see everywhere else, so they run special ads. Which attracts more audience because the ads are new, novel and often only run that time.

      In fact, TV stations say they care about TV show piracy, but they really don't. Because the C3 numbers they buy don't include the programming. All it means is the ratings go down, the show gets less money and it's either make do or get cancelled.

      Or why they're more than happy to stream TV because the ads are unskippable.

  4. Commercials by iamwhoiamtoday · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:Commercials by KingSkippus · · Score: 4, Informative

      You mean, like subscription TV service, aka, cable or satellite? I vaguely remember when our house got hooked up for cable about 30-ish years ago and the promise* then was that the cable-based channels would be mostly ad-free since we were paying up front. That lasted more or less 10-15 years I'd say (if you give networks a pass on promos for their own lineups).

      Then you're misremembering. There's a huge difference between ad-free networks being mostly on cable (the actual historical situation) and cable being mostly ad-free networks (how many people incorrectly remember the "good ol' days" of cable). Cable television has always had advertisements, barring a few notable premium channels such as HBO and, of course, public television stations. Many channels were nothing but ads, such as home shopping channels and local access stations that ran infomercials for something like 20 out of 24 hours a day.

      Originally, cable television was merely a way to get television into areas that were unable to receive broadcast signals, thanks to geography or other factors, and carried only the networks, which had ads. Eventually some "superstations" rose up that were only available via cable out-of-market, the first of which was Ted Turner's WTCG (later WTBS) and eventually stations like WGN and WOR, and all of those had ads. Later, almost all cable-only channels such as ESPN, MTV, and CNN have run ads since their inception.

      What you're mostly likely remembering is the commercials for specific premium channels like HBO, Cinemax, Showtime, Starz, and Disney (prior to 1997) that advertised that their channels were ad-free, but these were the exception and commanded extra fees in addition to your normal cable bill, not true of cable television in general.

  5. Re:1984 by FuzzNugget · · Score: 5, Insightful

    NSA and GCHQ not doin' it for ya?

  6. Re:1984 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    The Radioshack one was...in a different way.

  7. Re:Slashdot : Worth the Price Or Waste of Time? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    Can anyone recommend good IT (systems) sites? I've already bypassed most of the science articles on Slashdot with PhysOrg.

    beta.slashdot.org

  8. Radio Shack Ad Best So Far by theodp · · Score: 3

    The 80s called ... they want their store back

    1. Re:Radio Shack Ad Best So Far by dubdays · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I want the Radio Shack of the 80s back. Really, anything would be better than the abomination it's been turned into.

    2. Re:Radio Shack Ad Best So Far by jeffb+(2.718) · · Score: 5, Informative

      Hey, guys -- THEY STILL SELL PARTS. They've just compacted them into a set of shallow drawers, rather than displaying them on pegboard. I haven't counted, but it seems to me that they've got a better selection of components than they did in the 80s. Besides the obvious (how many varieties of blue LEDs and microcontrollers did they carry in 1980?), they've still got fairly robust coverage of things like DC connectors and resistors/capacitors/other passive stuff.

      I miss having the nerd stuff prominently displayed, but if they need to give more square footage to phones to stay afloat, I'm happy to pull out drawers instead of seeing it all disappear.

      (Remember Lafayette Electronics, another chain that sold components? If so, you're old, too.)

    3. Re:Radio Shack Ad Best So Far by cusco · · Score: 4, Informative

      **Some** Radio Shack stores still sell parts, mostly the stand-alone stores. The ones in the malls are almost completely cellphones and junk R/C toys.

      --
      "Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
  9. Re:Waste by viperidaenz · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Spending $4M gets you an ad during the superbowl. Uploading a video to youtube doesn't make it go viral.

  10. Shitty content. Shitty beta site. Stagnant traffic by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  11. Ads are not sold by the second... by hhawk · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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/
  12. Doberhuahua by fahrbot-bot · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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. . . .
  13. Re:Slashdot : Worth the Price Or Waste of Time? by jedidiah · · Score: 3, Insightful

    > 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.

    As someone who has actually been on here for more than a decade I find your pretense mildly amusing.

    --
    A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
  14. Re:Waste by M.+Baranczak · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Remember: the primary job of advertisers is selling advertising, not selling the stuff that's being advertised. They put a lot of effort into convincing people that advertising is effective.

  15. Worth it? by MasseKid · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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....

  16. Re:Shitty content. Shitty beta site. Stagnant traf by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.

  17. Re:Shitty content. Shitty beta site. Stagnant traf by Dan+East · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Yeah, because it's not like Slashdot had stories about the Superbowl during its heyday.

    --
    Better known as 318230.
  18. CPM -- cost per thousand by satch89450 · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.

  19. Re: Shitty content. Shitty beta site. Stagnant tra by glavenoid · · Score: 5, Informative

    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 /. beta rollout fallout.
  20. Re:1984 by Opportunist · · Score: 3, Insightful

    You remind me of the people who complain there ain't enough sports on TV when there are whole networks dedicated to it.

    If you want more references to 1984, watch C-SPAN.

    --
    We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
  21. Re:AdBlock by Solandri · · Score: 3, Funny

    Funny. I download the Super Bowl ads from the Pirate Bay so I don't have to watch the game.

  22. Re:1984 by Forbo · · Score: 4, Informative

    I honestly don't understand why Apple is on this list. They're pretty much the final computer company that will just sell you a computer, and not tie it into a million services that track your identity, and try to spam you/sell you.

    Setting up Mavericks:
    - "Oh, hey, sign in with your AppleID for everything iCloud!" No, shut up, I don't need your crap.
    - "You really should turn on location services so we know where you are at any given time!" No, shut up, you don't need that.
    - "Hey, in order to update the applications that come with the OS by default, you're going to need an AppleID with a credit card attached." No, shut up.

    Please, tell me again how Apple isn't trying to tie me into a million services that track me.