Everyone knows that scoring ad time during the Super Bowl is a turning point for any business. The Super Bowl is, perhaps, the pinnacle of advertising. Many have wondered, though, if the high ticket price and the effort to create a spectacular ad is actually worth it. Companies pull out all the stops. They push all boundaries and spare no cost. But is it really worth it? Do those ads actually drive traffic?
Wix, the cloud-based website development platform and an Anodot customer, ran an ad during last year’s Super Bowl and are looking forward to making waves with a new ad slot this year when the Panthers meet the Broncos. We took a look at the metrics Wix sends to Anodot for anomaly detection, and sure enough, during the 2015 Super Bowl there was indeed a huge spike (a.k.a. an anomaly) of traffic to Wix. As you can see based on the huge jump in the screenshot below, people actually are watching and reacting to the ads. They’re not just watching the ads so they can compare notes at the watercooler the next day, they’re actually paying attention and reacting.
The most traffic came from mobile devices, which reinforces the notion of a second screen phenomenon. Consumers are literally glued to their screens…multiple screens…and seamlessly move from one to the other. See an ad that sparks an interest? Consumers will look away from the television, pick up their mobile device and respond. In Wix's case, we saw a direct correlation in the air time and content consumption.
“We’ve seen a direct impact from the Super Bowl,” said Doron Ben David, CTO of Uprise, an advertising platform and another Anodot customer. “In past games, traffic to our networks went down since people were busy watching the game, and then it increased significantly during the ads. Viewers are consuming content on multiple devices and interacting between them.”
So what will Super Bowl 50 bring for advertisers and viewers this coming Sunday besides Wix's adorable upcoming Kung Fu Panda ad? We look forward to seeing the results in real time as we cheer from the sidelines.
