{"id":11235,"date":"2018-02-02T01:44:19","date_gmt":"2018-02-02T01:44:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/?p=11235"},"modified":"2018-02-03T01:46:16","modified_gmt":"2018-02-03T01:46:16","slug":"the-transformation-of-the-super-bowl-ad-experience","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/the-transformation-of-the-super-bowl-ad-experience\/","title":{"rendered":"The transformation of the Super Bowl ad experience"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mark Bartholomew<\/a>, University at Buffalo, The State University of New York<\/a><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

In an era of increasing media fragmentation<\/a>, you could describe the Super Bowl as the only annual media event<\/a> where a substantial portion of the U.S. population gathers at the same time to watch the same thing: Over 100 million<\/a> people tune in, and a good portion say the ads are the main reason<\/a> they\u2019re watching in the first place. <\/p>\n

For these reasons, the Super Bowl is the granddaddy of all ad buys. <\/p>\n

But in recent years, the tradition of millions of people simultaneously sharing the same commercial experience has become more complicated. <\/p>\n

As I discuss in my new book<\/a>, advertisers are leveraging new technologies to track our personal habits and target us with individualized advertising. In other words, they want to make sure the ads we see are aligned with our existing tastes and preferences. It\u2019s based on research showing that a \u201cpersonalized\u201d ad is more likely to stick in our heads and trigger a sale<\/a>. <\/p>\n

This sort of thing happens when we receive direct mail based on the type of car we own. It happens in the supermarket checkout lane when our shopper\u2019s loyalty card tells advertisers our purchase histories. <\/p>\n

It\u2019s happening during the Super Bowl, too. And it may even change the way we see Super Bowl ads in the future. <\/p>\n

Companies build personal digital profiles<\/h2>\n

Journalists tend to make a sport out of Super Bowl advertising. Like the stock market, the prices of ads<\/a> get analyzed. Like movie previews, teasers of ads for the big game are distributed and discussed before they air. And just like the game\u2019s biggest plays, the ads get dissected<\/a> afterward, with advertising experts breaking down which ones worked and which ones didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

Others recognize the collective nature of this event by characterizing Super Bowl ads as important reflections of the national spirit. Apple\u2019s famous \u201c1984<\/a>\u201d ad channeled the Cold War. Other ads<\/a> notoriously captured the dot-com bubble of the late 1990s. Last year, various commercials were praised<\/a> and critiqued for their implicit rebukes of the nascent Trump administration.<\/p>\n

But a Super Bowl ad doesn\u2019t just end when its 30 seconds on TV are up; it creeps into our lives in ways you might not realize. <\/p>\n

By one estimate, 78 percent<\/a> of Super Bowl viewers will engage with social media while watching the game. When they do so, they will supply valuable data for hungry marketers. When individual audience members share an ad or make a comment about one on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram \u2013 either during the game or after \u2013 those posts are tracked and cataloged. They become part of our digital profiles, auctioned off to the highest advertising bidder.<\/p>\n

Those who are more interested in the party or the game \u2013 but are nonetheless using social media \u2013 are still providing information that\u2019s valuable to advertisers.<\/p>\n

Even an innocuous Super Bowl party selfie can be mined for advertising gold. For example, Coca-Cola recently used an image recognition engine<\/a> to identify people who posted pictures in which they appeared happy or excited with cans or bottles of their competitors. Coca-Cola then targeted these people with ads for their<\/em> products on 40 mobile sites and apps. <\/p>\n

So if you\u2019re holding a can of Miller Lite or a bag of Doritos, Budweiser and Pringles might take note.<\/p>\n

\n \"\"
\n Image recognition engines can determine the preferred brands of users through the photos they post on social media.<\/span>
\n Mike Mozart<\/a>, CC BY<\/a><\/span>
\n <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Mining our brains to tailor the ad experience<\/h2>\n

Perhaps the most startling form of market research going on is the commercial surveillance taking place inside our heads. <\/p>\n

Because there\u2019s so much money riding on each Super Bowl ad \u2013 more than $5 million for each 30-second spot<\/a> \u2013 advertisers want to make sure they resonate. It\u2019s difficult to measure advertising effectiveness, so marketers have turned to brain science for an answer.<\/p>\n

For over a decade<\/a>, neuroscientists have been scanning the brains of select Super Bowl viewers to see how they react to the commercials that air. Their studies purport to reveal the narratives and images<\/a> that best capture the public\u2019s attention in a way that postgame surveys of Super Bowl audiences cannot. This information can then be leveraged to develop more effective Super Bowl ads in the future. <\/p>\n

Now, however, neuroscience is being used in the service of ad customization. A test conducted during last year\u2019s Super Bowl<\/a> scanned subjects\u2019 brain activity and tested their responses to different kinds of ads. Researchers adjusted the order of the ads shown during the game to fit each person\u2019s revealed preferences. (The test required viewers to see the game on a 40-minute delay.) <\/p>\n

Just as the neuroscientists had hoped, strategically altering the ordering of the ads to fit these preferences increased audience attention.<\/p>\n

The ultimate goal of studies like this is to target viewers with personalized television commercials. Cable providers and television networks are bullish on using new technologies to deliver something called \u201caddressable television<\/a>,\u201d the process of sending specific TV commercials<\/a> to individual households. <\/p>\n

Personalized TV has already<\/a> been used to target married women with children with ads for an amusement park and international fliers with ads for online travel. But addressable television need not be limited to showcasing particular products. Commercials could be customized to feature either a happy ending or a sad one, depending on who\u2019s watching.<\/p>\n

\"TheIf television becomes yet another site of individual targeting \u2013 like social media and online browsing \u2013 something will be lost. The Super Bowl, the event that seemingly brings the country together once a year, may become yet another media experience that cloisters us in our own digital bubbles.<\/p>\n

Mark Bartholomew<\/a>, Professor of Law, University at Buffalo, The State University of New York<\/a><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

This article was originally published on The Conversation<\/a>. Read the original article<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mark Bartholomew, University at Buffalo, The State University of New York In an era of increasing media fragmentation, you could describe the Super Bowl as the only annual media event where a substantial portion of the U.S. population gathers at the same time to watch the same thing: Over 100 million people tune in, and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":11232,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[293],"tags":[3957,308,702,463,3958,536],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11235"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11235"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11235\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11236,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11235\/revisions\/11236"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11232"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11235"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11235"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11235"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}