Score a Touchdown With These Super Bowl Marketing Campaign Tips

The Super Bowl is not only the major highlight of the NFL season but one of television’s biggest events, drawing in millions of viewers from North America and abroad each year. 

In 2024, over 123 million viewers in the US watched the Super Bowl game between the Kansas City Chiefs and the San Francisco 49ers, making it not only the most-watched Super Bowl in history but one of the most popular TV broadcasts of all time.

Not surprisingly, advertising during the Super Bowl is big business, with hundreds of major brands competing for a coveted spot during the annual broadcast. That’s because having a commercial aired during the Super Bowl is the equivalent of playing in the Super Bowl itself: it means you’ve made it.

There’s just one problem: space is limited and expensive. 

In 2024, ad space for the Super Bowl sold out three months ahead of schedule, with a 30-second spot going for a record-breaking $7 million USD.

Not every brand has a big enough budget to capture the attention of sports fans on the big day, leaving many small to mid-sized businesses (SMBs) on the sidelines.

Programmatic advertising is levelling the playing field—as Digiday reports, $7 million USD can go far on other advertising channels like social media, retail media, and connected TV (CTV), even on the big day.

Read on to learn more about the types of buyers who watch the Super Bowl and how you can use programmatic advertising to build brand awareness and convert customers before, during, and after the big game.

Super Bowl Audience Demographics and Trends

Before you start setting up your Super Bowl marketing campaigns, it helps to know who you’ll target. Let’s dig into the data.

Who Watches the Super Bowl? 

In 2024, Statista found that more than half of Americans planned on watching Super Bowl LVIII with the majority of people aged 30-44 and 45-64 saying they’d definitely watch it.

Coincidentally, that age range mirrors the generations with the highest consumer spending power, with Gen Xers (people born between 1965 and 1980) holding the largest share of global spending power at 23.5%, followed closely by millennials (born between 1981 and 1996).

Although the majority of Super Bowl viewers are men (54%), Taylor Swift’s publicized relationship with Kansas City tight end Travis Kelce caused a bump in female viewership during the 2023 regular season, with favourability amongst Gen Z and millennial women growing 11%.

How Much Money Does the Average Person Spend on the Super Bowl?

An estimated $17.3 billion USD was spent in the US economy for Super Bowl LVIII, with the average American spending $86.04 USD, mostly on food, drinks, apparel, decorations, and other major purchases—like televisions and furniture—for the big day.

How Do Viewers Tune Into the Super Bowl?

In 2024, Super Bowl LVIII aired in more than 195 countries and territories across nearly 100 partner networks, apps, and streaming services, with more than 62 million people tuning into the big game outside the US.

In recent years, streaming the Super Bowl via CTV has become a go-to method for watching the big game, especially among millennials and Gen Zers. Nielsen reported that Super Bowl viewership on smart TVs and other internet-connected devices increased by 50% in 2023.

A 2022 survey also found that 49% of people used two or more screens while watching football, with 69% using a mobile device or laptop to look up information about products or services advertised during game day.

What Does It All Mean?

Not only is the Super Bowl the biggest sporting and television event of the year, but it is also one of the biggest shopping days.

With people glued to their devices before, during, and after the big game, the Super Bowl presents a major opportunity for brands to capture undivided consumer attention.

6 Super Bowl Marketing Campaign Tips and Programmatic Advertising Strategies

Ready to kick off your Super Bowl marketing campaigns? Here are some programmatic advertising strategies to try during the upcoming championship.

1. Use CTV to Reach Fans Beyond the Super Bowl 

The Super Bowl is more than a three- to four-hour game or one-day affair. Excitement for the Super Bowl ramps up during the regular season and continues after the big day, with fans watching playoff games, behind-the-scenes coverage, and post-game recaps (not to mention highlights from the halftime show, which 129 million viewers watched in 2024) on platforms and devices outside of traditional linear TV.

CTV advertising allows brands to capitalize on the surge in excitement by strategically amplifying their campaigns before, during, and after the game. For example, advertisers could target viewers watching regular season games, general news coverage, or shows related to the Super Bowl—like sports documentaries—to connect with customers, even if it’s not during the game itself.

2. Connect With Sports Fans Listening to Their Favourite Podcasts or Radio Shows 

Programmatic audio lets advertisers place 15–30-second ads before, in between, or at the end of streaming playlists, podcasts, or digital radio shows.

With 64% of sports fans saying they listen to sports content through podcasts or radio shows, programmatic audio provides the perfect opportunity to capture consumer attention during screen-free moments.

3. Reach Relevant Audiences With Geotargeting

Geotargeting is a targeting tactic that lets you deliver ads based on a user’s location. With geotargeting, you can target by country, state, US county, city, or zip/postal code. You can also leverage a list of addresses or latitude and longitude coordinates to reach your desired audiences. 

Using geotargeting makes it possible to target and retarget consumers who pass through specific locations. To reach people who might watch the Super Bowl, you could set a radius around football stadiums where fans attend games, popular sports equipment or memorabilia stores, and pubs where fans gather on game day.

4. Leverage Cookieless Targeting to Reach Receptive Audiences

Contextual advertising is a cookieless targeting method that can help you reach the right audience by showing ads based on the content and keywords of the webpage they’re on. Ads get placed based on the content a user is consuming at that time, which means you can reach users in a specific frame of mind. 

For example, if you’d like to advertise a food-delivery promotion to consumers who plan on hosting a Super Bowl party, you can leverage contextual advertising to ensure your ads appear alongside relevant content, like snack ideas or game-day recipes.

Or, you can leverage digital out-of-home (DOOH) to advertise in high-traffic retail locations. For example, advertisers can place ads on digital screens beside the chip aisle or in the checkout line at grocery stores to remind people to pick up Super Bowl snacks for the big day.

5. Create a Cohesive Story With a Multi-Channel Strategy

A multi-channel strategy helps you reach consumers throughout the entire funnel by creating a cohesive story across various channels, like native, display, video, CTV, audio, in-game, and DOOH.  

The key benefit of a multi-channel strategy for a Super Bowl campaign is that you can reach viewers wherever they are before, during, or after the game. Your target audience probably uses a variety of devices and channels throughout their day, so it’s important to approach your targeting strategy holistically when trying to score a new customer.

6. Measure the Impact of Your Super Bowl Ads

Measuring the performance of your Super Bowl campaigns is crucial for understanding which touch points in your marketing funnel are generating the most value. You can then use this data to make informed budgetary decisions that will help to scale the profitability of your Super Bowl campaigns. 

You can also leverage a brand lift study to measure the impact of your Super Bowl campaigns across programmatic channels and get a clear picture of consumer sentiment and brand affinity after customers see your ads.

Win Big With Programmatic Advertising This Super Bowl

The Super Bowl may last only a few hours, but the right Super Bowl marketing campaign can make a big impact long after the final whistle blows.

Ready to kick off a programmatic campaign just in time for the Super Bowl? Request a demo to learn more about StackAdapt.