The Big Game: Unlocking CTV Ad Budget for Super Bowl Season

The Super Bowl isn’t just the pinnacle of American football—it’s the holy grail of advertising. Year after year, brands deliver their boldest, most creative campaigns to an audience of millions, making it the biggest global advertising event on the calendar. 

While a 30-second spot during the broadcast may be out of reach for most brands, the rise of connected TV (CTV) and streaming has changed the game.

Smart, integrated strategies now allow businesses to harness the buzz and energy of the Super Bowl season without breaking the bank. This article explores how CTV is levelling the playing field, making it easier than ever to claim a piece of the Super Bowl spotlight.

CTV Viewership Growth

With more households embracing streaming, CTV has grown from a niche platform to a dominant force in how audiences consume content. Its ability to reach highly engaged viewers makes it an essential tool for brands looking to maximize their impact during high-profile moments.

Today, approximately 88% of US households own at least one internet-connected TV device. CTV now accounts for over one-third of total TV usage, with projections indicating it will surpass linear TV in reach in 2024. This shift is particularly evident among younger audiences, who increasingly turn to CTV for entertainment. By 2025, an estimated 62.6 million millennials and 56.1 million Gen Zers in the US will watch CTV, highlighting its appeal to these key demographics.

For advertisers, these trends represent a golden opportunity. The growing preference for CTV means brands can deliver targeted, engaging campaigns to a large and highly diverse audience. 

Why CTV Advertising Is Effective

CTV advertising offers a powerful combination of versatility, cost-efficiency, and measurable impact, making it an ideal platform for brands aiming to make a splash during high-profile events like the Super Bowl. Unlike traditional TV, which locks advertisers into static formats and hefty price tags, CTV delivers dynamic opportunities to engage viewers at a fraction of the cost.

• Versatility and cost efficiency: CTV allows brands to tailor campaigns to specific audiences, helping messages reach the right viewers at the right time. This targeted approach minimizes wasted ad spend and makes advertising more accessible, especially for businesses with smaller budgets during the high-stakes Super Bowl season.
• Brand building and recall: Super Bowl ads are about creating memorable moments, and CTV excels at delivering this. The ability to serve ads in premium environments enhances brand credibility, allowing even smaller brands to stand out alongside bigger players.
• Measurable results: Unlike traditional TV, CTV offers measurement tools that give advertisers real-time insights into performance.
• Interactive elements drive engagement: Features like QR codes and shoppable ads allow brands to drive immediate engagement, seamlessly guiding viewers from awareness to action. Whether scanning a code for a limited-time offer or purchasing a product directly from an ad, these tools transform passive viewers into active participants.

Targeting Audiences During Super Bowl Season

The Super Bowl isn’t just an American pastime—it’s a global spectacle that attracts a wide array of viewers, from die-hard sports fans to casual watchers tuning in for the halftime show or iconic ads. 

This diversity presents both an opportunity and a challenge for advertisers: How can your message resonate with a broad audience? The answer lies in data-driven audience targeting and personalized experiences.

Personalization Drives Engagement

Generic messages may get lost in the shuffle during an event as crowded as the Super Bowl. Personalized experiences—such as tailoring ad content to reflect regional preferences or aligning messages with audience values—can make a brand’s campaign more memorable. 

For instance, a fitness brand might showcase products to active lifestyle enthusiasts, while a tech company targets early adopters with a preview of cutting-edge innovations. These tailored approaches help build deeper connections with viewers.

The Role of Data-Driven Insights

With CTV, advertisers can leverage real-time insights to fine-tune their campaigns throughout the Super Bowl season. This includes identifying what types of content resonate most with different segments and reallocating resources to high-performing strategies. 

This data-backed adaptability ensures that every impression counts, even in a crowded media environment.

Building a Cross-Platform Super Bowl Advertising Strategy

While CTV is a powerful tool for reaching engaged audiences, it shouldn’t exist in a silo. A truly effective Super Bowl advertising strategy integrates CTV into a broader multi-channel approach, leveraging the strengths of linear TV, mobile, and social media to maximize reach, impact, and return on investment (ROI). By creating a cohesive, cross-platform strategy, brands can amplify their message and capture audience attention across multiple touchpoints.

Blending Linear TV and CTV for Maximum Reach

Linear TV remains a cornerstone of Super Bowl advertising, offering unparalleled reach and cultural cachet. However, pairing it with CTV unlocks even greater potential. 

While linear TV excels at delivering broad exposure during the game itself, CTV allows brands to extend their campaign’s lifecycle before, during, and after the event. CTV’s targeting capabilities also make it possible to reach niche audiences that may not be fully captured by traditional TV, ensuring no potential customer is left out.

For example, a brand could use linear TV for high-impact, splashy Super Bowl ads, while CTV delivers tailored messages to specific demographics or regions. This combination ensures mass awareness and personalized engagement, driving stronger overall results.

The Value of Second Screen Experiences

Super Bowl viewers rarely engage with just one screen. Mobile devices and social media are integral to the experience, with millions of fans sharing reactions, searching for products, and interacting with branded content in real time. Complementing CTV and linear TV campaigns with mobile and social media efforts can significantly boost engagement and conversions.

Interactive features, such as shoppable posts or live polls on social platforms, can connect the ad and audience seamlessly. Encouraging viewers to participate in hashtags, scan QR codes, or explore behind-the-scenes content provides an enriched, interactive experience that reinforces brand recall.

Creating a Unified Campaign Message

The key to a successful cross-platform strategy is consistency. Every element—whether a TV spot, CTV ad, or social media campaign—should share a unified theme and message that reinforces the brand’s identity and resonates with viewers. 

Using complementary visuals, slogans, and calls-to-action ensures the campaign feels cohesive across platforms, while tailored adjustments cater to the unique strengths of each channel.

Advertising Before, During, and After the Super Bowl

Super Bowl advertising is no longer confined to the three- to four-hour game itself. Today, the most successful campaigns leverage the entire Super Bowl season, creating excitement in the lead-up, maximizing impact during the event, and keeping audiences engaged long after the final whistle. CTV plays a pivotal role in each phase, offering dynamic and cost-effective opportunities to connect with viewers throughout the journey.

Before the Game	During the Game	After the Game
Use CTV to roll out teaser ads, share behind-the-scenes content, or debut exclusive previews of their game-day spots. These tactics build buzz and allow brands to test audience reactions and fine-tune messaging before the big event. Targeted campaigns on CTV ensure the right people see this content, driving early engagement and setting the stage for a successful game-day reveal.	Run complementary campaigns that target specific demographics or showcase interactive features like QR codes and shoppable ads. These CTV ads work alongside linear TV to reinforce brand messages and create interactive touchpoints, ensuring the campaign resonates deeply with various audiences.	Post-game advertising strategies allow brands to capitalize on the lingering excitement by creating recap content that highlights their ads, shares behind-the-scenes insights, or engages audiences in discussions about the best commercials of the night. Leveraging CTV for post-game advertising enables brands to re-engage audiences at lower rates compared to the premium costs of pre-game or in-game ads.

Super Bowl advertising is no longer a one-day affair. With CTV, brands can strategically amplify their campaigns before, during, and after the game, making the most of the season’s excitement while maximizing their impact and ROI.

Challenges in Connected TV Measurement

While CTV has revolutionized advertising with its precision targeting and interactive capabilities, measuring its performance remains challenging. As CTV matures as a platform, advertisers face hurdles in cross-media measurement and navigating a fragmented ecosystem. Understanding these challenges—and the innovations addressing them—helps brands make informed decisions and maximize their investment in CTV.

Cross-Media Measurement Gaps

One of the biggest challenges in CTV advertising is the lack of standardized metrics across media channels. Unlike linear TV, which relies on long-established rating systems, CTV does not yet have a universally accepted framework for measuring reach, frequency, and performance. This inconsistency makes it difficult for advertisers to compare the effectiveness of CTV campaigns with those on traditional TV or other digital platforms, complicating budget allocation and ROI analysis.

Fragmentation in the Ecosystem

The CTV landscape is highly fragmented, with multiple platforms, devices, and content providers. This fragmentation often results in siloed data, where advertisers can only see performance within individual platforms rather than across the entire campaign. Without a unified view, brands risk overexposing certain audiences or missing opportunities to optimize their channel messaging.

Innovative Solutions on the Horizon

Despite these challenges, the industry is striving toward better measurement and integration. Emerging solutions, such as multi-platform attribution models and data-sharing agreements, are helping bridge the gaps between CTV and other media channels. 

Unified measurement tools are being developed to provide a clearer picture of campaign reach and performance across platforms, enabling advertisers to assess their campaigns holistically.

Additionally, AI and machine learning advancements are improving CTV analytics by identifying patterns and insights across fragmented data sources. These technologies allow advertisers to gain deeper insights into audience behaviour and campaign effectiveness, even without standardized metrics.

Ready to Join The Big Game?

The Super Bowl offers an unparalleled opportunity to connect with audiences on a grand scale, and programmatic advertising through CTV makes it more accessible than ever. With StackAdapt’s CTV inventory, your brand can tap into the excitement, deliver targeted campaigns, and drive real results—before, during, and after the big game.

Take the first step toward making your mark this Super Bowl season. Partner with StackAdapt to craft a winning CTV strategy that gets your brand in the game. Book a demo today to get started.