>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-...

> 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.