The Super Bowl attracts some of the largest TV audiences in North America. In 2023, the Super Bowl game between the Kansas City Chiefs and the Philadelphia Eagles was watched by 115.1 million viewers in the US.
Watching a big game brings people together. From living room Super Bowl parties to gatherings in a local pub, there is a sense of community amongst Super Bowl viewers.
Super Bowl viewers are a broad and enthusiastic audience. While it’s still possible to watch the Super Bowl through traditional TV channels, many Super Bowl viewers are ditching cable and watching the big game through connected TV (CTV) instead.
Read on to learn who the Super Bowl audience is, and how you can use programmatic advertising to reach them.
Super Bowl Audience Demographics and Trends
Who watches the Super Bowl?
Let’s explore the data. Statista found that across most age groups, around half of Americans planned to watch Super Bowl LVII (2023).
According to historical data, Super Bowl viewership corresponds with spending. Consumer spending related to the Super Bowl was $16.5 billion USD in 2023. Of that, 79% of viewers’ purchases were made up of food and beverages.
How do viewers tune into the Super Bowl?
There are various ways that viewers tune in to watch the Super Bowl, in fact, 49% of viewers use multiple screens to follow the big game. While most viewers care about the game itself, 42% tune in specifically to watch Super Bowl ads.
5 Super Bowl Campaign Tips
Ready to tap into live sports audiences? Get started with these Super Bowl campaign tips.
1. Create Anticipation Through Connected TV Advertising
Traditional TV can be prohibitively expensive, especially for small or midsize brands. Connected TV (CTV) advertising is more cost-effective because it provides access to the open internet, enhanced targeting, and inventory selection.
By leveraging CTV for Super Bowl marketing, you’ll reach engaged viewers who have made the active choice to watch programming that relates to the Super Bowl. And, they don’t have the option to fast forward or skip any ads. Because of this, CTV ads are a great way to build anticipation for the Super Bowl.
2. Use Programmatic Audio to Inspire Super Bowl Audiences
Programmatic audio ads appear in audio content like podcasts, digital radio, and music streaming services. This ad format uses voiceover and sound design to deliver a message to your target audience.
Audio ads are typically between 15 seconds and 1 minute long. They can be played before, at the midroll, or at the end of a streaming playlist or podcast. Or, they’ll run at designated times throughout digital radio programs.
Programmatic audio is a perfect channel for running Super Bowl campaigns because audio is emotionally engaging and screen-free. Audio ads also capture listeners in an undistracted moment.
You can leverage this channel to excite and inspire Super Bowl viewers leading up to the event. Use audio to help them imagine how they’ll spend Super Bowl day—with their friends gathered in a living room, or maybe in a sports bar watching the game over pub fare.
3. Reach Relevant Audiences With Geotargeting
Geotargeting is a targeting tactic that enables you to deliver ads based on a user’s location. With geotargeting, you can target by country, state, US county, city, or zip code. You also have the option to leverage a list of addresses or latitude and longitude coordinates to reach your desired Super Bowl audiences.
Using geotargeting makes it possible to target and retarget consumers who pass through specific locations. To reach Super Bowl fans, you might set the radius around stadiums where football fans attend games, or pubs where fans gather to watch sports games.
4. Leverage Cookieless Targeting to Reach Receptive Audiences
Cookieless targeting tactics ensure that ads are relevant to the page on which they appear, making it a perfect method to reach enthusiastic Super Bowl fans. Contextual advertising is a cookieless targeting method that can help you reach Super Bowl audiences at the right moment, at the right time.
Contextual advertising targets ads based on the environment in which an ad appears, rather than targeting ads based on user behaviour. Your ad is placed based on the content that a user is consuming at that time, which means you can reach users who are in a specific frame of mind.
For example, if you’d like to advertise a food-delivery promotion to consumers who will be watching the Super Bowl, you can leverage contextual advertising to ensure your ads appear alongside Super Bowl coverage, like online content.
Or you can leverage digital out-of-home (DOOH) to advertise in offline space. For example, place ads on digital screens beside the chip counter, or in the checkout line at grocery stores. This way, people are reminded in opportune moments to pick up the goods for the big day.
5. Create a Cohesive Story With a Multi-Channel Strategy
A multi-channel strategy enables you to create a Super Bowl campaign that reaches consumers throughout the entire funnel. With this strategy, you can create a cohesive story across channels like native, display, video, connected TV (CTV), audio, in-game advertising, and digital out-of-home (DOOH).
Using a mix of complementary channels increases the percentage of the total target audience that your campaign can reach, and it also helps you to craft a brand story throughout the entire customer journey. You may run a campaign across two channels, like display and audio, or across more including in-game and CTV.
The key benefit of a multi-channel strategy for a Super Bowl campaign is that this approach helps you reach Super Bowl viewers where they are: which is everywhere. Users are on a variety of devices and channels throughout their day, so it’s important to approach your targeting strategy holistically.
Measure the Impact of Your Super Bowl Campaigns
Measuring the performance of your Super Bowl campaigns is crucial for understanding which touch points in your marketing funnel are generating the most value. You can then use that data to make informed budgetary decisions that will help to scale the profitability of your Super Bowl campaigns.
You can also leverage a brand lift study for your Super Bowl campaign to measure the impact of your campaigns across programmatic channels. It helps to provide a picture of the consumer sentiment and brand affinity of people who have been exposed to your Super Bowl campaign media.
Want to run programmatic campaigns for the Super Bowl? Request a demo to learn more about StackAdapt.
