Snickers Bets On Pre-Game TV Ads To Boost Live Super Bowl Spot
Snickers isn't taking as big a leap of faith with its much hyped live Super Bowl spot as meets the eye. And while the brand added a 36-hour live event to its marketing mix leading up to the big game, Snickers isn’t simply using live content to boost its buzz around the Super Bowl.Yeah, you guessed it (well, let's face it, the headline gave it away) -- Snickers has been spending steadily on (old reliable) television advertising to promote its Super Bowl ad teaser 'Horse Casting' featuring a cardboard cutout of Adam Driver, who will star in Snickers' Super Sunday spot.Since first airing last Monday, Snickers has spent an estimated $1.3 million on 'Horse Casting' across 558 airings for a whopping 81+ million TV impressions, according to real-time TV attention analytics company iSpot.tv (as measured by what appears on 10+ million smart TV screens).To put this in perspective -- of the 86 Super Bowl ads and teasers that have been released, Snickers has invested in the second most TV impressions behind TurboTax's 'Humpty Fall' spot with nearly 125 million TV impressions.TV viewers are mostly staying tuned in to Snickers' Super Bowl teaser, and iSpot reports a 90%+ average ad completion rate, much higher than the 84% industry average.Below is a chart of Snickers' investment in TV attention this week. The blue line is the number of daily TV impressions Snickers is getting (per iSpot). Keep this in mind when applauding Snickers' "risky" live Super Bowl ad spot today because they rode into Sunday Sunday largely on the back of old faithful TV advertising.