This was probably similar to what you would have seen, if you watched the Super Bowl (or the news) last night. A blackout. With the Super Bowl already being a super hot topic, a power failure (blackout) that lasted for 35 minutes and happened in the middle of the Super Bowl was equally sensational.

Marketers quickly took to the Internet and social media to continue their advertisements by putting their sponsored tweets near popular search terms. The blackout was a perfect opportunity for some relatively lower-cost marketing that was still associated with the event. With Super Bowl ad space costing $133,333 per second, you’d definitely want to make the most of that time.

They betted on people, whether they actually watched the Super Bowl or not, to quickly go online to find out more about the blackout by searching words such as: blackout, power failure, and power outage to name a few. You know what? These marketers were right! “Power outage” became the 8th most searched term during the game.

Marketers choose to use mass marketing during the Super Bowl, despite the premium price, because there was prestige associated with the timeslot and the Super Bowl was almost always the most watched program and drew a large audience. Their products may not have a very specific target market and so the Super Bowl was perfect with its ability to reach to broad demographic base and covering a large geographical region, North America.

Lastly, Super Bowl commercials hold a special place in people’s hearts as evident by the high amount of views these commercials receive on YouTube.

I’m going to end this post by sharing my favourite Super Bowl commercial, which received 7.5 million views in 4 days.