Verizon’s Beyoncé Super Bowl ad may have been the smartest move in media history. For Beyoncé. If you haven’t seen the ad, here’s what you need to know: playing on the phrase “Beyoncé breaks the Internet” – because she tends to do popular things that people talk about online a lot – former Veep star Tony Hale challenges her to ‘break’ Verizon’s 5G network. Cue a series of skits including Bar-Bey (Beyoncé as Barbie), a cyborg Beyoncé, her announcement that she’s running for Beyoncé of the United States and finally a dance routine in space.
Verizon’s 5G network proves resilient, so as she falls to the floor of the space shuttle she stares at the camera “you ain’t gonna break me. OK, they ready. Drop the new music.”
Beyoncé didn’t perform at the Super Bowl, but she did show up to watch, sending the paparazzi wild. And as the ad ended, her website announced the launch of her new album, Renaissance Act II, released March 29. Drop the new music. See?
At the time of writing, the TV ratings aren’t in yet – although the game was expected to top last year’s 115 million, in part thanks to speculation that Taylor Swift, who is dating the victorious Kansas City Chief’s player Travis Kelce, would use the event to announce her support for Joe Biden. This, by the way, did not come to pass.
So over 100 million Americans saw Beyonce announce her new album in an ad at the Super Bowl. How much did this cost her? Nothing. In fact, she earned a staggering $30 million from Verizon to appear in the ad for which she had to take part in an 18-hour shoot. That’s her getting paid roughly $1.5 million per hour with Verizon shelling out on top of that – per a leak to gossip site Popbitch – “somewhere in the region of $7m” to make the ad. And with a 30 second slot in the Super Bowl costing $7 million, the 45 second ad cost an additional $10.5 million to put on air. That’s close to $50 million.
The next question is – how many people join Verizon’s 5G network as a result? It’s safe to say that on March 29 more people will have downloaded Beyonce’s album than signed up for a new Verizon account. Oh, and all that talk about Taylor Swift vanished from the headlines. Beyonce’s victory was total.
But what did Verizon get out of all this? And why would they pay Ms Knowles that rumoured $30 million so she could plug her new album? The answer is – they probably had to. The shape of US ad spend is changing from dripping budgets around local radio stations, national newspapers and magazines and network television into digital ads and mega drops at huge events that ride memes for months afterwards. Ad revenue in the US has been wobbly for a good 12 months, showing its slowest rate of growth since 2009. This orgy of spending around the Super Bowl suggests that some companies have been saving up for the Big One.
The key to this strategy is celebrity. This year’s Super Bowl saw an Uber Eats ad starring Jennifer Aniston reuniting with David Schwimmer, the Beckhams, rapper Jelly Roll and Usher, a Pringles ad with Chris Pratt, a Christopher Walken BMW ad, a Booking.com ad with Tina Fey and a T-Mobile ad with Zach Braff, Jason Momoa, Donald Faison and Jennifer Beals. Even Martin Scorsese showed up for Squarespace.
According to Tim Curtis at Hollywood talent giant WME – the agency has more than 30 clients in Super Bowl ads this year – the mid-range star can earn $1-3 million while big name talent trouser an average of $10 million. Given the list of names in the Uber Eats spot, it’s likely the ad cost more than Verizon’s Beyoncé spot, with talent fees approaching a total of $60 million and a number of shoots in a variety of locations.
This seems insane. But back in 2023, Dunkin’ Donuts paid Ben Affleck $10 million for a Super Bowl ad where he served unsuspecting customers, concluding with his wife Jennifer Lopez. “We ran it once and got 7 billion media impressions, and it kind of kickstarted the year,” Scott Murphy, the president of Dunkin’, recently told Entrepreneur magazine. “The brand is just in the conversation It just really feels in the fabric of things now.” The Monday after the game the chain sold more donuts than any single day in its history.
This would explain why Affleck was back this year, forming a boyband with Matt Damon and footballer Tom Brady to try and impress Lopez as she recorded her new album. It’s not always a guaranteed strategy. Larry David received $10 million to appear in a 2022 Super Bowl ad for FTX prior to the cryptocurrency company’s collapse and its founder Sam Bankman-Fried’s fraud conviction. David later told an interviewer that part of that fee was in crypto and he lost money overall.
That may not be an enormous comfort to those at the receiving end of the changing nature of advertising spend. So-called “offline media” saw ad spend in the US fall by around 4 per cent in 2023, while overall spending rose by just over 5 per cent. TV, radio, newspapers and magazines all saw money disappear. The results include the nearly 1,000 people laid off at a range of publications in the UK, Ireland, US and Canada, according to figures collated by the UK Press Gazette.
This comes on top of the 8,000 odd job losses last year. With seven of the world’s ten most populous countries holding elections this year, there are fewer journalists than ever to cover them. Still, there’s always the new Beyoncéalbum to look forward to.
