Superbowl Ads Will Fumble the 2nd Screen

Make sure you have your smartphone when you watch the game on Sunday.  Superbowl XLVI ads will be filled with two screen enhancements  that make certain ads trigger your mobile device.  Shazam has announced their audio fingerprinting (hold your phone up to the TV and it will recognize the ad via audio signals) will power a third of the ads during the big game. Companies from Coke to Kia are revving up their twitter hash tags hoping you’ll use them when you tweet, slapping QR codes on their ads for you to scan with you phone, and releasing iPhone apps. Is two-screen advertising about to have its ‘moment’?

Ads deploying these two screen gimmicks on Superbowl Sunday will gets lots of eyeballs and free press for the following week. They will stand out from the crowd, which is important considering the price. And while it’s fun to use your phone in news ways, these ads will seem like toys and fall flat. Like other smartphone gimmicks everyone will do it once. But by the time Spring Training starts these companies and their customers will have forgotten about the 2nd screen. Will that mean two screen ad campaigns are a failure? Not at all. It will fail this time because it was the wrong advertisers who were running two screen ads.

Two screen campaigns are the future of advertising, but they will produce only for a certain type of advertiser and it’s not the usual Superbowl crowd. Look at the advertisers spending their big game budget on two screen Superbowl ads. Coke, Kia, Chevy, Pepsi MAX and Doritos. It’s the usual collection of big brands and products that spend on the Super Bowl. There isn’t anything about buying these products that requires a 2nd screen. These are brand campaigns.

What kind of advertisers require the 2nd screen and should be running two screen ad campaigns? National retail chains with lots of brick and mortar locations. These companies are both national and local and their ad budgets reflect this reality.

Imagine you own a chain of outdoor clothing and equipment stores across the country. To make money, and get ROI on your advertising expense you need people to come to one of many retail locations nearest them with the intent to purchase new gear. The majority of your advertising budget is intended to get consumers closer to the purchase event where you make money. In other words, get butts in the door.

As the owner of this outdoor gear and clothing chain you have learned that mobile devices – the 2nd screen  - are increasingly a mission critical part of your retail strategy (if it’s not you are in trouble) and a way to harness consumer purchasing intent. It’s not hard to imagine how creating a measurable advertising chain from the consumer’s TV to their smartphone to their arrival at your store is a good use of your advertising dollars. For you  two screen advertising isn’t just about brand connection, it’s about pushing your customer’s purchase intent from the screen they watch 5 hours a day to the screen they have in hand when they walk in your store.

Companies that require the 2nd screen are the ones that should be running two screen ad campaigns.  On Sunday I’ll be looking for one of the Superbowl ads to take this TV-to-Smartphone-to-local angle, but I won’t hold my breath. To make two screen ads become the norm for consumers we need these national-local retail companies, already targeting your smartphone, to run two screen campaigns. This will happen, but not on Sunday.