2022 Super Bowl Ads - How Brands Can Protect their Investment

Super Bowl 56 is right around the corner! This sporting event is perhaps one of the few that fans and non-fans alike look forward to every year. Rams and Bengal fans are no doubt psyched about the big game. Fans like me, whose team didn’t even have a chance at making the playoffs (still love you Washington—though not a fan of the new name—just why?!) or like owner and president of Constellix and DNS Made Easy Steven Job, whose beloved Bills were oh so close, yet so far away, will just be tuning in for some good ole American football. Though Job still may be a little salty about the shoulda coulda wouldas…

On the flip side, you have the non-football fans who tune in for parties and get-togethers. But what most all Super Bowl watchers have in common is the love of watching the commercials. Super Bowl ads have generated so much hype over the years that tuning in for the commercials is almost as big a pastime as watching the game itself. 

Guess that explains the huge price tag. And with such high expectations from the audience, brands go out of their way to impress in hopes of garnering awareness and new customers. 

Super Bowl Ad Spend

Ad spending for America’s most popular sporting event has increased year over year since inception, with ads finally surpassing $1 million in 1995. But at what price point did Super Bowl ads start? Commercials for Super Bowl in 1967, when the Green Bay Packers brought the pain to the Kansas City Chiefs, went for $37,500 for a 30-second spot. That might have been a lot back then, but today, it’s just plain “cute.” In 2022, brands dish out a staggering $6.5 million to air during the big game. That’s nearly a 200% increase from 1967! In just the last two years, spending jumped approximately 14%. And all for a mere 30 seconds. 

Suffice it to say, the Super Bowl means big money. And today, big ad spending means big traffic for domains. 

Are you ready?

History of Super Bowl Crashes

I ask if you’re ready because historically speaking, many brands weren’t. Let’s take a quick look down memory lane.

• 2021 - CBS All Access broke again, just in time for the Super Bowl. Luckily, issues didn’t persist throughout the game like it did in 2019. Still, this is a tradition CBS should not be keeping, just saying. 
• 2021 - US Sportsbook missed a few field goals during Super Bowl 55—or was it Kambi who powered three of the betting sites that went down? Finger-pointing aside, they took a gamble at not being adequately prepared—but it paid off after all—they were back up by kick-off and experienced a record betting volume.
• 2020 - Hulu had a hiccup right before Super Bowl 2020, which ironically, caused a large volume of viewers to miss Hulu’s Tom Brady commercial that touted its new live sports option. Disgruntled fans lashed out on Twitter, some announcing they were dropping Hulu for YouTubeTV—talking about an interception. 
• 2019 - CBS’ live streaming for Super Bowl LIII (53) seemed to be trying to break Daunte Culpepper and Kerry Collin’ records for most fumbles in a season, just in one night. Crashes before and during the game at critical moments, including the fourth quarter with 4:17 left in the game had CBS app users fuming.  
• 2017 - 84 Lumber’s microsite, designed just for the Super Bowl, crashed almost immediately after airing and remained down, tackled by its visitors.
• 2013 - Calvin Klein’s seamless underwear had a not so seamless website experience
• 2013 - Coca-Cola’s interactive ad called “The Chase,” which was a poll designed to drive traffic to its specially made website crashed under the pressure—guess they were chasing their tails on that one.
• 2013 - Sodastream’s first-time Super Bowl ad created such a buzz that their website couldn’t handle the “suddenstream” of visitors.
• 2013 - While this one didn’t crash the site, Audi’s boy goes solo to prom and gets the girl commercial inspired enough interest that its site was noticeably impaired. Guess Audi’s servers had one too many…  
  

While I could keep adding to this list, I think you get the point. Entertainment value isn’t the only expectation the audience has. Viewers who watch Super Bowl ads also expect advertising brands’ sites to be accessible. 

Whether it’s being unprepared for traffic surges or domains underestimating the amount of traffic they’ll be receiving, the Super Bowl has notoriously, albeit inadvertently, caused lots of site crashes. 

The truth is, though, that almost all of these instances could have been avoided (more on that later).

Super Bowl Ads 2022

Some companies are committing a false start this Super Bowl and are dropping sneak peeks or even full versions of their 2022 ads. Of course, we’re not seeing any penalty flags being thrown over it. If you’re the spoiler loving type, check out ENews to see some of them:

Amazon’s Alexa

AT&T

Booking.com

Budweiser

Busch

Carvana

Expedia

Flamin’ Hot

Hellmann’s

Kia

Lay’s

Nissan Z

Planet Fitness

Rocket Mortgage

Sam’s Club

Uber Eats

Vroom

Super Bowl Halftime Show Lineup 2022

Some big names in Hip Hop and R&B will be hitting the stage for Super Bowl 2022. The lineup includes Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, Eminem, Mary J. Blige, and Kendrick Lamar. The halftime show alone can cause a strain on streaming services. In fact, the halftime show often has more viewers than the actual game. Some artists will even generate a surge in music streaming services and their own websites during the Super Bowl, so even seemingly unrelated domains need to brace themselves for larger than normal amounts of traffic.  

How Brands Can Protect Their Investments: Secondary DNS and Failover

Hands down, the best and most cost-effective way of avoiding provider-related crashes is by having two DNS providers: Secondary DNS or Primary/Primary. With this setup, if one of your providers fumbles, the other one will be there to recover the ball. When it comes to internal server or network issues, DNS Failover will ensure web traffic is automatically rerouted to a backup resource if your primary resource becomes unavailable. 

The key is redundancy!

Offensive Strategy: Protect Your Brand From DDoS Attacks 

A surge of legitimate traffic isn’t the only threat to successful streaming during the Super Bowl. It’s also possible that your domain could be attacked with the sole intent of rendering your site usable. One of the most common and popular threats are DDoS attacks. Fortunately, there are ways to circumvent these nasties, and at the DNS level to boot. It all comes down to monitoring. With an advanced monitoring solution, like our Real-time Traffic Anomaly Detection service, your team will be alerted to any unusual activity and take proactive steps to mitigate threats before they can cause damage to your domain. 

Speaking of mitigation, Constellix offers a unique service that essentially lets you create your own custom WAF. If there is suspicious or malicious traffic going to your domain, you can block this traffic and prevent it any more from reaching your server(s). Filters can be made for region, state, city, ASN, or even IP addresses. This is an excellent way of preventing your domain from going down at crucial moments. 

After all, you don’t want to catch the social wrath of viewers who missed a big touchdown pass or missed that fourth-down conversion because your streaming service took a “time out.” The show must go on!

Super Bowl 2022: Hut-hut!

This year, the Super Bowl will be at the SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles, CA, and it will be live on NBC and streamed on Peacock and NBC Sports app. While overall views were down, last year’s game still saw 96.5 million viewers—65% of which were from streaming—making it the most-streamed NFL game to date. With COVID-19 still in the mix, 2022 is likely to see the same if not greater numbers. Let’s hope NBC is prepared and doesn’t drop the ball like CBS and other streaming services of the past—not to mention the brands who are advertising!