Eight pricey movie commercials were telecast in NBC Television’s Super Bowl with NBC’s corporate sibling Universal Pictures behind six of the films.
The rate-card for in-game commercials is $4.5 million. Movies are typically a big category taking 4-10 of the 60+ Super Bowl slots. It looks like NBC Universal—which is owned by diversified cable TV conglomerate Comcast—piled in Universal commercials to help NBC Television make the professional football championship game a sellout. NBC Television announced just a few days ago the final commercial was sold, while in other years the sellout occurred weeks earlier,
You can tell NBC Universal made it all-hands-on-deck by having Universal’s erotic female drama “Fifty Shades of Grey” in the Super Bowl, since it’s a poor demographic fit with the male-oriented sports event. And “Fifty Shades” hardly needs to build awareness–the main goal of movie movie ads in the Super Bowl–given the built-in fan base of the source book.
In addition, two other film commercials ran just before the start of the game.
The eight in-game commercials were: Universal Pictures’ “Jurassic World,” Disney’s “Tomorrowland,” Universal’s “Minions,” Paramount’s “Terminator: Genisys,” Universal’s “Furious 7,” Universal’s “Perfect Pitch 2,” Universal Pictures “Fifty Shades of Grey” and Universal’s “Ted 2” (“Perfect Pitch 2” was in half-time, which was a good demographic fit with the musical half-time show). All were 30-seconds, except “Furious 7,” which ran 60 seconds.
Just prior to the game, commercials for Liongate’s “The Divergence Series: Insurgent” and 20th Century Fox’s “Kingsman: The Secret Service” appeared.
A new wrinkle this year is movie ads ranked unusually high in creativity. Usually, they’re at the very bottom of consumer votes for being interesting, because film commercials usually just string together scenes from movies. There are no elaborate original productions like in other categories. According to USA Today’s AdMeter, “Jurassic World” was #25 of 61 and “Minions” #28, to lead the movie category. Lowest was “Fifty Shades of Grey” at #5, which buttresses my contention the erotic female drama is a poor fit to advertise in a sports event.
The high ratings may signal this crop of Super Bowl movie ads are well received by moviegoers. We’ll see as these films premiere in theaters in the weeks ahead.
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