When we see an advertisement on TV that strikes our fancy, it’s often the next step is to look up the product online. The easiest way to find out more online is of course, with search.
70%* of this year’s Super Bowl advertisers purchased paid search keywords for their brand names which will help the advertiser’s site be found by someone searching for more information.
What’s sad however is that 93%* of the ads didn’t buy keywords related to their ad content (spokesperson, slogans etc) and only 28%* of the advertisers bought keywords around the Super Bowl. Surely another $1 per click on top of a US$2.7 million 30 second TVC wouldn’t deter these advertisers. Depending on your goals, it’s not usually the best keyword strategy to target words like these. But adding on a search campaign onto the TVC is going to help get the most out of their massive spend. It’d increase the number of conversions produced by the ads to provide more of a result than “branding”.
A couple of years ago Ford had a Super Bowl spot featuring Kermit the Frog to promote the Ford Escape Hybrid. Quite cunningly, GM purchased the “Kermit” keywords to promote their own hybrid line. This got them a lot of traffic who were actually searching because of the Ford ad.
I think/hope next year there’s more of an integrated approach to these ads. Maybe sometime in New Zealand we’ll see strategies like this taking place?
*Figures are provided by Reprise Media, to see full results of their study visit their Super Bowl Search Marketing Scorecard