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This has always bugged me. $7 million for a 30-second-long ad. What do they get out of it? Well, presumably, a change in peoples' concrete behaviors that is

This has always bugged me. $7 million for a 30-second-long ad. What do they get out of it? Well, presumably, a change in peoples' concrete behaviors that is more than $7 million. They expect that (otherwise they wouldn't buy the ad in the first place). At the same time, we're told that all the sex and violence on TV doesn't matter, because it doesn't change peoples' behavior. So, which is it? Does what we watch on TV change our behavior, in concrete ways, or doesn't it? I suspect that it does change our behavior, that the advertisers are right. (They're betting a lot of money on their position; I'd expect them to have some basis for doing so before committing that kind of coin.) But if so, then the rest of what we watch also changes our behavior. And, obviously, so does our social media feed...

SoftTalker 8mo ago
It's not just a single run of the ad. The same ad is run many times over, on other TV programs. It's promoted on social media. People see it and think "Oh yeah, that was a super bowl ad" and that makes it more memorable, and they associate it with the fun they had watching the game.
- xnx 8mo ago
  > It's promoted on social media. It gets discussed for free on HN.
  - wincy 8mo ago
    Well luckily I mostly just read the comments on HN, and I didn’t watch the superbowl, so unless someone tells me about the amazing Frito Lays commercial they saw, I have no idea which company is being talked about. Except I have been reminded that my Ring doorbell is bad, very bad.
3eb7988a1663 8mo ago
There is the cache for everyone involved in creating the commercial. So, nice feather in the cap for the hundreds of people who get to touch it. I have no doubt advertising has some effect on consumer preferences. However, I am a skeptic that one more Coke Cola ad aired at the Super Bowl meaningfully changes sales relative to the billions they already spend elsewhere.
- anonymous908213 8mo ago
  > I am a skeptic that one more Coke Cola ad aired at the Super Bowl meaningfully changes sales It actually might. Coca Cola had $48b revenue last year, or in other words, 4800 millions. Spending 7 of those millions to put your product in front of 100 million people seems like a reasonable bet. If even a couple percent of those people are (sub)consciously influenced to pick up a 12-pack the next time they stop by a store when they might otherwise not have, it would likely be a profitable endeavour given the profit margins on their sugar water. I think there's also a longer-term status play at stake. If only one of Coca Cola or Pepsi engaged in flashy advertising to this degree, it might give them a slight edge in status perception. In the long term, even an 0.1% shift in consumer preferences between Coca Cola or Pepsi would shift significantly more than 7 million in value. So if one of them engages in this, the other is obliged to follow, in a classic prisoner's dilemma. At any rate, given that 4800 millions in annual revenue translates to 13 million in sales per day, the number paid for that advertisement is a rounding error and doesn't have to move the needle very much at all to be successful.
  - hn_throwaway_99 8mo ago
    The irony is that this especially true for Coca Cola. They are basically an advertising company at heart. They sell flavored sugar water. For all the hype about "are you a coke person or a Pepsi person", in blind tests most people can't tell the difference between coke and generic cola. The billions they spend in marketing annually helps ensure they can sell their flavored sugar water for a lot more than Aldi sells their store brand flavored sugar water.
    - cyberax 8mo ago
      I don't know, I can distinguish between Coca-Cola and Pepsi-Cola easily. I prefer Diet Coke, FWIW. I also now have a bottle of Lab Cola from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TDkH3EbWTYc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TDkH3EbWTYc and it _is_ indistinguishable from regular Coca-Cola to me. So it might be plausible in case of a deliberate Coca-Cola knock-off?
senectus1 8mo ago
approx 300 million eyeballs.
shoxidizer 8mo ago
And of course the influencing on media networks doesn't stop at the 30 second slot when the money is spent by the million ;)
ycombinatrix 8mo ago
Sorry, I didn't realize we weren't supposed to be having sex.
Swizec 8mo ago
>This has always bugged me. $7 million for a 30-second-long ad. What do they get out of it? Super Bowl ads are about brand building. They're not conversion ads. Their direct impact is to reduce CPC (cost per conversion) on other advertising. Say you have to pay $100 per instagram conversion. Users see your ads cold and need a lot of convicing. Most won't pay attention long enough for your ad to convert. You need them to see a lot of ads. But after they've seen your brand plastered all over the Super Bowl (and other brand opportunities), those same instagram ads might start converting at $90 per conversion. Users see your ad and go "Oh yeah I remember that brand, lemme check this out" The brand effect is so strong that displaying a Visa (or Mastercard or Amex) logo near checkout literally increases consumer spend. Study from 1986: https://academic.oup.com/jcr/article-abstract/13/3/348/1822480 https://academic.oup.com/jcr/article-abstract/13/3/348/18224... Another study from 2015 showing that credit card logos increase estimates of item value: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Effect-of-Credit-Card-Logos-on-the-Consumer-Item-by-Nakajima-Izumida/fd3527e0073a119fb7906d18d373d2d51c2e8019 https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Effect-of-Credit-Card-...
- anonymous908213 8mo ago
  > Another study from 2015 showing that credit card logos increase estimates of item value Notably, the abstract of the 2015 study specifically points out that the 1986 study has frequently failed to replicate, and although it finds an effect, the 2015 study has n = 28. As always with psychology studies, we would do well not to assert their purported findings as facts, as with the statement "The brand effect is so strong that displaying a Visa logo near checkout literally increases consumer spend". Psychology as a field is far too unreliable to make such assertions with confidence.
  - signatoremo 8mo ago
    Not able to replicate an earlier study doesn’t mean that study is wrong. More likely that the assumptions and factors taken into consideration have changed, especially after almost 30 years. The pull of Visa brand may have declined, but the effect may be as strong or even stronger if it was replaced with, says, Apple.
babypuncher 8mo ago
Ads are designed to change our behavior.
KurSix 8mo ago
Advertising usually isn'tt trying to create a behavior from scratch, it's trying to redirect or prioritize behavior that was already likely to happen

SoftTalker 8mo ago

It's not just a single run of the ad. The same ad is run many times over, on other TV programs. It's promoted on social media. People see it and think "Oh yeah, that was a super bowl ad" and that makes it more memorable, and they associate it with the fun they had watching the game.

xnx 8mo ago
> It's promoted on social media. It gets discussed for free on HN.
- wincy 8mo ago
  Well luckily I mostly just read the comments on HN, and I didn’t watch the superbowl, so unless someone tells me about the amazing Frito Lays commercial they saw, I have no idea which company is being talked about. Except I have been reminded that my Ring doorbell is bad, very bad.

3eb7988a1663 8mo ago

There is the cache for everyone involved in creating the commercial. So, nice feather in the cap for the hundreds of people who get to touch it. I have no doubt advertising has some effect on consumer preferences. However, I am a skeptic that one more Coke Cola ad aired at the Super Bowl meaningfully changes sales relative to the billions they already spend elsewhere.

anonymous908213 8mo ago
> I am a skeptic that one more Coke Cola ad aired at the Super Bowl meaningfully changes sales It actually might. Coca Cola had $48b revenue last year, or in other words, 4800 millions. Spending 7 of those millions to put your product in front of 100 million people seems like a reasonable bet. If even a couple percent of those people are (sub)consciously influenced to pick up a 12-pack the next time they stop by a store when they might otherwise not have, it would likely be a profitable endeavour given the profit margins on their sugar water. I think there's also a longer-term status play at stake. If only one of Coca Cola or Pepsi engaged in flashy advertising to this degree, it might give them a slight edge in status perception. In the long term, even an 0.1% shift in consumer preferences between Coca Cola or Pepsi would shift significantly more than 7 million in value. So if one of them engages in this, the other is obliged to follow, in a classic prisoner's dilemma. At any rate, given that 4800 millions in annual revenue translates to 13 million in sales per day, the number paid for that advertisement is a rounding error and doesn't have to move the needle very much at all to be successful.
- hn_throwaway_99 8mo ago
  The irony is that this especially true for Coca Cola. They are basically an advertising company at heart. They sell flavored sugar water. For all the hype about "are you a coke person or a Pepsi person", in blind tests most people can't tell the difference between coke and generic cola. The billions they spend in marketing annually helps ensure they can sell their flavored sugar water for a lot more than Aldi sells their store brand flavored sugar water.
  - cyberax 8mo ago
    I don't know, I can distinguish between Coca-Cola and Pepsi-Cola easily. I prefer Diet Coke, FWIW. I also now have a bottle of Lab Cola from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TDkH3EbWTYc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TDkH3EbWTYc and it _is_ indistinguishable from regular Coca-Cola to me. So it might be plausible in case of a deliberate Coca-Cola knock-off?

senectus1 8mo ago

approx 300 million eyeballs.

shoxidizer 8mo ago

And of course the influencing on media networks doesn't stop at the 30 second slot when the money is spent by the million ;)

ycombinatrix 8mo ago

Sorry, I didn't realize we weren't supposed to be having sex.

Swizec 8mo ago

>This has always bugged me. $7 million for a 30-second-long ad. What do they get out of it? Super Bowl ads are about brand building. They're not conversion ads. Their direct impact is to reduce CPC (cost per conversion) on other advertising. Say you have to pay $100 per instagram conversion. Users see your ads cold and need a lot of convicing. Most won't pay attention long enough for your ad to convert. You need them to see a lot of ads. But after they've seen your brand plastered all over the Super Bowl (and other brand opportunities), those same instagram ads might start converting at $90 per conversion. Users see your ad and go "Oh yeah I remember that brand, lemme check this out" The brand effect is so strong that displaying a Visa (or Mastercard or Amex) logo near checkout literally increases consumer spend. Study from 1986: https://academic.oup.com/jcr/article-abstract/13/3/348/1822480 https://academic.oup.com/jcr/article-abstract/13/3/348/18224... Another study from 2015 showing that credit card logos increase estimates of item value: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Effect-of-Credit-Card-Logos-on-the-Consumer-Item-by-Nakajima-Izumida/fd3527e0073a119fb7906d18d373d2d51c2e8019 https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Effect-of-Credit-Card-...

anonymous908213 8mo ago
> Another study from 2015 showing that credit card logos increase estimates of item value Notably, the abstract of the 2015 study specifically points out that the 1986 study has frequently failed to replicate, and although it finds an effect, the 2015 study has n = 28. As always with psychology studies, we would do well not to assert their purported findings as facts, as with the statement "The brand effect is so strong that displaying a Visa logo near checkout literally increases consumer spend". Psychology as a field is far too unreliable to make such assertions with confidence.
- signatoremo 8mo ago
  Not able to replicate an earlier study doesn’t mean that study is wrong. More likely that the assumptions and factors taken into consideration have changed, especially after almost 30 years. The pull of Visa brand may have declined, but the effect may be as strong or even stronger if it was replaced with, says, Apple.

babypuncher 8mo ago

Ads are designed to change our behavior.

KurSix 8mo ago

Advertising usually isn'tt trying to create a behavior from scratch, it's trying to redirect or prioritize behavior that was already likely to happen