What a $7M Superbowl Ad Budget Could Accomplish with Influencer Marketing: 8 Considerations

It’s that time of year again when all your advertising friends start to joke that you mute the game and turn the sound on for the ads. The ads may be worth tuning in to, but are they worth the cost?

Reports multiple 30-second ads for the game priced at over $7 million per slot. Despite viewership consistently trending down, with a 14% drop in the past five years, rates are up over 20% since the last time NBC hosted the Super Bowl in February of 2018. 2022 marked the most expensive Super Bowl ad cost in TV history.

Is it worth the eyeballs? NBCUniversal drew an average audience of 112.3 million viewers for Super Bowl LVI coverage, according to MorningConsult. In comparison, the #sephorasquad hashtag on TikTok alone has 371.5M views.

In a recent article Brendan Gahan, partner and chief social officer at Mekanism, told MorningBrew that an advertiser could have run 37 branded hashtag challenges for the price of a Super Bowl spot in 2020.

Here’s why that $7M SuperBowl ad budget might be more cost-effective spent elsewhere:

The same budget could get you any one of the following options:

‍#1: 10 x macro ambassadors (with an average of 2.5M+ followers) on year-long contracts, dramatically raising the top of mind awareness, brand love metrics, & full-funnel activity, delivering 200+ assets

‍#2: 100 x annual mid-tier ambassadors (avg. 200K followers) delivering monthly Reels and Stories content, 485M potential impressions, 97M views, and 2400+ assets for repurposing

‍#3: 1000 x annual micro ambassadors (avg. 25K followers) delivering 2 x TikToks each per month, totaling 24,000+ posts

Cost per view at approx. $0.07

With the same CPV, we wrapped an annual ambassador program where, even with 12 months of agency fees included, we drove 20K+ clicks and more than 300 assets for repurposing on social channels, emailers, and .com.

Targeting with trust > mass appeal

A Super Bowl ad means creating a loose association between your brand and something your boyfriend, co-worker, or grandma would love. Think puppies and Budweiser. Influencers represent niche interests, long-term trust, deep and detailed product recommendations, and moving customers through the funnel faster than ever before. This Mad-Men-Era approach to advertising is becoming less and less effective as consumer skepticism continues to increase.

Authenticity is hard when you’re trying to appeal to everyone

And Bruce Springsteen would never drive a Jeep.

Investing in influence means investing in people

Your Super Bowl budget could put $1K into the pockets of 8,000 independent creatives.

Ad-spots don’t include production budgets.

Between the year-long planning and production schedule, celebrity talent fees, and agency costs, brands spend between $750K - $3M on producing their ads. This means a Super Bowl ad in 2022 is $8M-$10M (!).

$8m on one creative concept = so many eggs in one basket

And Super Bowl spots are not always well received. Tough day at the office if your team spent most of your client’s annual budget turning your brand into the butt of a Twitter joke.

Consumers no longer care about the story your brand tells but the one your customers do

By handing the reins over to influencers to bring your brand strategy to life, you diversify the perspectives through which your brand story is told.

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Want to reach a more targeted audience at a fraction of the cost and better ROI? Let’s talk: sales@fohr.co.