Yesterday I was watching the biggest football game of the season, the Super Bowl. And of course, being Canada it did not air many of Super Bowl’s famed advertisements. Instead I was stuck watching CTV’s advertisement for its new drama “motive” many times over. It turns out that Canadian TV stations purchase the right to broadcast the Super Bowl in Canada, so they have the right to sell separate advertising.
After today’s class on market segmentation, it is pretty clear that this is a form of geographic segmentation, with the product being segmented for different countries. But one question I had burning in my mind was why companies wouldn’t pay CTV for advertising time. In the US it is rumored to cost $3.7 million dollars for a 30-second ad during the Super Bowl. In Canada, it costs around $400,000. Although the amount of people that watch the Super Bowl in Canada are significantly less than in the US (7.3 million compared to 111.3 million) wouldn’t the mere name of it being a Super Bowl ad bring it more attention? And especially when all the advertisements surrounding it are the same repetitive commercials, wouldn’t it make a “real” Super Bowl ad stand out even more? After all, despite the advertisements being segmented geographically, the target audience can’t be that different. For example, it’s not as if Canadians would like Doritos any less than an American would.
GEICO ad, featuring retired NBA player Dikembe Mutumbo, which aired in Canada.
However, there are some companies willing to pay for the Canadian Super Bowl ad time, for example, GEICO in this commercial, which stood out amongst all the other boring commercials. Strangely though, GEICO does not insure Canadian residents, which really made me wonder why it would bother spending $400k on an ad reaching a Canadian audience. One reason could be that it was building its brand name or to reach the Americans in Canada who would be able to buy their insurance.
All in all, the Super Bowl advertisements were very disappointing and I wish I could say I remembered a really good advertisement, but instead I was only left with this.
I agree, the advertisements in Canada just aren’t the same as in the US.