TV Talk: Why do Super Bowl ads feel less super these days?

Fox sold out its “Super Bowl LVII” commercial inventory with some spots going for $7 million for 30-seconds of ad time, but with many companies releasing their spots in advance of the big game, have the ads become less of an event if you can watch them days before Sunday’s kick-off?

Perhaps so, but advertisers don’t mind because the early release gets more eyeballs on their products and services.

Jeff Maggs, Atlanta-based managing partner of Pittsburgh ad agency Brunner, said having the ads available early doesn’t diminish their potency during the game. Brunner has a local spot airing during this year’s Super Bowl for Edgar Snyder & Associates.

“I actually think it could amplify the impact,” he said on Monday. “Every time we talk about the Super Bowl, I don’t even call it ‘a Super Bowl ad’ anymore. It’s a Super Bowl integrated campaign. These advertisers are not only buying the in-game experience, they’re buying the on-site experience, they’re buying the social media connections around the game. And advertisers are getting better and better and more creative about how they link what happens in the game, in the traditional media, with what happens in the digital world — it’s become really clever. Now consumers look forward to it as well. I actually think it amplifies the experience as opposed to minimizing.”

Maggs was involved in the creation of a controversial national ad for 84 Lumber that aired in part during the 2017 Super Bowl.

“The real purpose of that campaign was to support 84 Lumber’s significant growth across the country and to actually recruit talent. It wasn’t about just lumber sales with lumber dealers or lumber customers,” he said. “They were really trying to diversify their talent pool to become a more contemporary organization.”

This year, it seemed like some advertisers may not give away their whole ads before the game, instead releasing 15-second teaser spots online weeks ahead of the Super Bowl. But by mid-day Monday, that notion began to recede as several advertisers who had released teaser spots posted the full 30-second game day ads on YouTube.

In 2014, The Los Angeles Times estimated Super Bowl ads that got an early YouTube preview were viewed 2.5 times more than ads that debuted on game day.

Robert Thompson, founding director of the Bleier Center for Television and Popular Culture at Syracuse University, said that additional viewing probably helps today’s Super Bowl commercials better serve their intended purpose – to sell products and services – but he also feels like some of the cultural cachet Super Bowl ads once had has been lost.

He theorizes that TV networks convinced American viewers that the Super Bowl was not just a game, but an amazing half-time show with a big-name music star (not the Up with People singers of the 1976 Super Bowl or the marching bands that preceded them) and a film festival of the world’s most extravagant commercials.

But viewers may have caught onto that sleight-of-hand marketing.

“How many times have you heard people say, ‘I used to go to the bathroom during the commercials but now I go to the bathroom during the game’? That became a cliché,” Thompson said. “But I think the smoke has cleared and we begin to see more clearly that yeah, they’re better than the rest of the commercials, but they aren’t all that memorable. And there have been several years now of not-terribly-exciting lineups of Super Bowl commercials. If you have three or four years where the commercials are disappointing, you start thinking, okay, I can go to the bathroom during the ads, especially if I’ve already seen them three times.”

While celebrities are not new in Super Bowl commercials, some of this year’s ads continue the trend of featuring actors as their famous characters (e.g. Winona Ryder as her Edward Scissorhands” character in a 2021 Cadillac ad), including Bryan Cranston and Aaron Paul reprising their “Breaking Bad” roles in a spot for snack food PopCorners that was directed by “Bad” creator Vince Gilligan. Alicia Silverstone brings back her “Clueless” character, Cher, for online shopping site Rakuten.

After the release of teasers, the full ads for both PopCorners and Rakuten posted to YouTube on Monday.

Maggs said the trend he sees continuing this year is greater interactivity.

“You are not watching a television spot in a one-dimensional way,” he said. “There’s going to be a lot of spots that ask you to do things — the interactivity and the engagement with the spot itself is going to continue to be a significant trend where people get more out of it. Candidly, it’s one of the ways agencies sell that kind of investment to our client is to say, ‘Look, not only you’re gonna get the Super Bowl, you’re gonna get the halo of everything around that and it’s going to live on and be amplified over time.’”

Other Super Bowl ads to watch for: Jon Hamm, Brie Larson and Pete Davidson hawking Hellman’s Mayonnaise, Maya Rudolph stumping for M&Ms candy, Miles Teller and wife Keleigh Sperry dancing and drinking Bud Light while on a phone call that’s put them on an interminable hold, Ozzy Osbourne shilling for enterprise software company Workday, rapper Jack Harlow munching on Doritos and 2007 Woodland Hills High School grad and former New England Patriots tight end Rob Gronkowski attempting to kick a field goal in a live commercial for sports betting platform FanDuel.

Thompson offers one last theory about why Super Bowl commercials don’t have the staying power they did when Apple’s “1984” ad jump-started the whole Super Bowl-ads-are-special trend.

“A lot of television back then was really bad, which means when you watch these commercials that had these enormous budgets for 60 seconds, you could make the argument that they were some of the best TV that was available,” Thompson said. “Now there’s a seemingly endless supply of really, really high-quality cinematography and writing [in TV and streaming shows], from ‘The Sopranos’ to ‘Breaking Bad’ to ‘Game of Thrones.’ … Now the best Super Bowl commercials are been-there-done-that compared to not only what we’ve watched the rest of the year, but compared to what we watched last night.”

Kept/canceled/revived

Series landing second season renewals in the past week include “1923” (Paramount+), “The Terminal List” (Amazon Prime Video, which is also planning a prequel series focused on Taylor Kitsch’s character), The Mayfair Witches” (AMC/AMC+), “The Traitors” (Peacock), “So Help Me Todd” (CBS), “The ‘90s Show” (Netflix), “Hit-Monkey” (Hulu) and the “Night Court” sequel series (NBC).

But NBC’s “The Blacklist” will end with its upcoming 10th season, debuting at 10 p.m. Feb. 26.

HBO Max canceled “Pennyworth” after three seasons.

ESPN canceled “Outside the Lines” after a 33-year run but will revive “Sports Reporters” (1988-2017) on YouTube.

Per Deadline.com, Paramount Network’s “Yellowstone” may end with the second half of season five due to disagreements with star Kevin Costner over how much time he has to spend filming the series. The report suggests an “extension” of the series starring Matthew McConaughey may be in the works.

Paramount+’s “Frasier” revival began production this month with director James Burrows helming the first two episodes that find Frasier Crane (Kelsey Grammar) relocating from Seattle back to Boston.

Paramount + with Showtime ordered a “Dexter” prequel straight-to-series with former “Dexter” and “Dexter: New Blood” showrunner Clyde Phillips executive producing while also developing a sequel to “Dexter: New Blood” following Dexter’s son, Harrison. The service is also developing multiple “Billions” spin-offs, including “Billions: Miami” (set in the world of private aviation), “Billions: London” (UK finance), “Millions” (young up-and-comers in Manhattan) and “Trillions” (titans of industry).

Channel surfing

Filmed-in-Pittsburgh Tom Hanks movie “A Man Called Otto” will hit paid video on demand streaming (on Apple, Amazon, Google platforms, etc.) on Feb. 28. … To avoid people missing it due to the Super Bowl on Sunday, HBO Max and HBO On Demand will make episode five of “The Last of Us” available at 9 a.m. Feb. 10 with a linear telecast on HBO still slated for 9 p.m. Sunday. … Tom Brady will begin his stint with Fox Sports in the fall 2024 NFL season.