Movie distributors placed just one cinema commercial in TV’s Super Bowl telecast, although Hollywood was all over the Feb. 7 sports events with video streamers, celebrities, and loads of imagery from famous movie/TV content.
The telecast carried six movie-related commercials in streaming and streaming platforms, especially Paramount+, which is a corporate sibling of Super Bowl telecaster CBS Television.
In a normal year, cinema films take four to eight Super Bowl in-game commercials. But with big-city movies theaters closed due to the pandemic, Universal Pictures supernatural thriller “Old” is the only theatrical in 2021. Creepy drama “Old” is scheduled for July 23 premiere in cinemas. Add together the one true theatrical (“Old”) with the six video-streaming commercials, and that total of seven that is a normal film count for the Super Bowl.
Last year, five theatricals were in the Super Bowl and most are still unreleased because of the Covid-19 pandemic; Hollywood is still unsure of cinema normalcy, so theatrical distributors took a cautious attitude about commercials in 2021’s pricey TV show. Last year’s unreleased Super Bowl class includes MGM’s 007 spy thriller “No Time to Die” and Universal’s “Minions: The Rise of Gru.”
CBS Television telecast the Super Bowl reportedly charged $5.5 million per 30-second commercial; for the first-time advertisers had to pay an additional $300,000 to be on the TV network’s online live stream. The game also sports commercials in “shoulder” slots: pre-game, half-time and post-game at less cost to be adjacent to the big game.
The following discussion is for in-game commercials. The USA Today Admeter counts 57 in-game commercials.
Video streamers stepped up for Super Bowl 2021 filling the vacuum a down year for cinema movie commercials. Amazon Prime placed a commercial for “Coming 2 America,” a sequel to the Eddie Murphy comedy theatrical of 1988. Paramount Pictures sold the sequel rights — originally conceived as a cinema film — to Amazon Prime.
Walt Disney Co. promoted its streaming bundle in a TV commercial for its streaming offer of Disney+, Hulu and ESPN+ together (with a message that movies-to-sports is in its one package). Further, the Disney+ “The Falcon and the Winter Soldier” limited TV series plucked from Disney’s Marvel Studio comic book universe got a commercial (since not a film, “Falcon” is not counted here as among the six film-related streaming commercials)
Paramount+ streaming service (previously called CBS All Access) ran four commercials promoting the platform “Sweet Victory,” “Ice Bridge Crack,” “Roll Call” and “Hooked It.”
CBS Television said that it sold out Super Bowl ads weeks before the game, but in fact took up space with in-house advertisers like those commercials for Paramount+, which is a corporate sibling within the ViacomCBS conglomerate. Would Paramount+ bought four commercials if another TV network hosted the Super Bowl? Doubt it. By the way, a fifth Paramount+ commercial ran in the post-game.
Further, the 57 in-game commercials are about a half-dozen shy of the normal Super Bowl load (usually in the low 60s), so all the CBS Television show promotions–and there were a lot–reduced the inventory of paid third-party advertising slots. It’s tricky to compare advertising load because this year a single Jeep commercial ran 120-minutes, which meant it filled four 30–second slots.
As for Hollywood celebrity and its IP (intellectual property), “USA Today’s” Admeter ranked a Rocket Mortgage commercial “Certain is Better” starring comedian Tracy Morgan and Dave Bautista (“Guardians of the Galaxy”) as the best ad for its creative content. Other Hollywood celebrities/IP include “Wayne’s World” movie spoof as an Uber Eats commercial, “Edward Scissorhands” movie spoof for a Cadillac car commercial, Bruce Springsteen as presenter for Jeep vehicles in that long spot, and Oscar-winning actor Matthew McConaughey fronting for Doritos snack chips, among many.
While theatrical “Old” got the nod from Universal Pictures, pre-game news stories indicated that the studio was going to promote the ninth “The Fast & Furious” actioner instead. The switcheroo might be related to the movie titled “F9” being set for May 28 theatrical release, while “Old” sits in a safer mid-summer date amid the pandemic.
Over the years, the Super Bowl became a platform for the most costly, striking commercials because of its roughly 100 million-person U.S. viewing audience–the biggest in U.S. TV. Its commercials get additional viewing in online aggregations and by commentators.However, movie commercials tend to rank low in audience polls and commentator evaluation, since film advertising simply presents snippets—like “product” samples. Other commercials unfurl original, high concept messages.
Though usually ranked low by critics for creative flair, the movie commercials are effective sales tools, evidenced by film marketers returning every year. The highest-ranked movie related commercial this year was for the “Sweet Victory” spot for the Paramount+ streaming platform at #27 (of 57 in total) on Admeter.
That film-clip laden Hollywood commercials are effective marketing tools is evidenced by viewership data on Super Bowl commercials on YouTube after the big game. Paramount+ “Sweet Victory” ranked a lofty #5 of the 57 total commercials, according to a “Variety” story by Todd Spangler.
Hollywood products also took the next two spots in the post-game top 10. In #6 on YouTube, Disney+/Marvel Entertainment captured eyeballs for its “The Falcon and the Winter Soldier” TV miniseries. In #7, Amazon Prime got traffic with the “Coming 2 America” blurb. These same commercials rank much lower in separate votes ranking creative punch, where they are surpassed by original commercials with big production values.
Super Bowl commercial prices remain high because there always seems to be a new category of hot money itching for wide exposure. For example, a quarter century ago cell phones were an embryonic business that are now regulars. More recently, dot-com tech companies jumped at Super Bowl exposure, some of which are no longer in business such as Epidemic Marketing and e-Stamps. In 2021, the video streamers like Paramount+ came out of nowhere for six in-game advertisements.
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