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...

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Swizec 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

>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/13/3/348/18224...

Another study from 2015 showing that credit card logos increase estimates of item value: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Effect-of-Credit-Card-...

	▲	anonymous908213 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> 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.

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KurSix an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

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

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SoftTalker 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

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.

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xnx 2 hours ago | parent [-]

> It's promoted on social media.

It gets discussed for free on HN.

	▲	wincy 44 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		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.

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3eb7988a1663 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

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.

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anonymous908213 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> 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.

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hn_throwaway_99 5 hours ago | parent [-]

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.

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Dylan16807 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> in blind tests most people can't tell the difference between coke and generic cola

According to who?

I think most colas taste fine but it's not hard to differentiate the ones I've had.

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hn_throwaway_99 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> According to who?

According to researchers who actually ran blinded tests: https://daily.jstor.org/the-coca-cola-wars-can-anybody-reall...

What's funny is kind of the reverse is also true: when people were given the exact same cola but one was labeled Coke and the other Pepsi, not only did they say they preferred Coke, but fMRI brain scans should more prefrontal cortex activation for the Coke as well: https://medium.com/@marketingoal/the-pepsi-vs-cola-cola-expe... . That's the power of branding.

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jcattle 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Have you done a blind test before? A group of friends and I have done a blind test of around 10 coke brands before. The only ones you could reasonably tell apart were Pepsi and some dubious organic cokes. But of all the ones that actually try to replicate the coca cola flavour it was just pure guesswork on our side.

	▲	wincy 41 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		I did a blind taste test of Starry, Sprite, and 7-Up the other day. My wife was amused when I nailed all three. As a recovering fat guy, I’m a bit of a soft drink connoisseur (diet soda now!). Unfortunately then the question became “well, which do you prefer?” And my answer was “I have no idea”.

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cyberax 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

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 and it _is_ indistinguishable from regular Coca-Cola to me. So it might be plausible in case of a deliberate Coca-Cola knock-off?

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2Gkashmiri 5 hours ago | parent [-]

I also "can" and so can my siblings but I actuallly stopped drinking sugar water but my siblings don't so they are "passionate" about coke and "hate" Pepsi for some reason. I don't understand

	▲	conductr an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Pepsi is disgusting to me. To even speak of them as substitutes is outrageous to me. If you like it fine. I like both mayo and mustard but if someone doesn’t like mayo I don’t recommend it as a substitute for mustard.

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xnx 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> It's promoted on social media.

Résumé-driven marketing

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ycombinatrix 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

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

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shoxidizer 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

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

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babypuncher 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Ads are designed to change our behavior.

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senectus1 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

approx 300 million eyeballs.