2022 Super Bowl Marketing Becomes the Main Battlefield of Cryptocurrencies

During the "American Spring Festival Gala" Super Bowl, cryptocurrency product vendors sent a message to the American masses through advertisements: ignore the naysayers and start investing.

It's a bold ad, as the largest digital asset, bitcoin, has fallen about 40 percent from its all-time high in November. The Bloomberg Galaxy Crypto Index, which tracks the value of various cryptocurrencies, is down nearly 17 percent this year.

Zhitong Finance understands that global regulators, including the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), are strictly regulating the industry. Just last week, media reports said that cryptocurrency lender BlockFi Inc. Ready to pay $100 million to settle allegations it illegally supplied products. The product pays high interest rates to customers to allow them to lend digital tokens.

Americans are used to hearing a long list of risks at the end of a drug ad. But the same disclaimer didn't appear in a financial ad during last Sunday's Super Bowl. Instead, these ads, featuring a large number of celebrities, capitalized on consumers' fear of missing out.

As the most compliant listed exchange in the United States, Coinbase (COIN.US) naturally wants to gain more traffic. According to sports reporter and encryption enthusiast Joe Pompliano, Coinbase spent a total of 14 million US dollars for the Super Bowl marketing promotion. In terms of specific form, Coinbase displays a color QR code on the screen of all users watching the game, and registered users can get $15 in Bitcoin, and the display time is as long as 60 seconds. Due to the surge in traffic, the Coinbase website was briefly down for a while.

What FTX and Crypto.com are paying attention to is that they spent $135 million and $700 million respectively to acquire the naming rights of the main stadium of the NBA Miami Heat and the naming rights of the Los Angeles Lakers and Clippers home. As for eToro, the world's leading social investment platform, it is also actively deploying its crypto trading business. In the marketing of this Super Bowl, a Shiba Inu appeared in an advertisement placed by eToro, with the caption "Imagine a community with millions of members" . This hints that the crypto community is vibrant.

This year seems familiar, as this time last year, Bitcoin's decline was just getting started, approaching its record high of nearly $69,000 in November, with shares in GameStop (GME.US) and AMC Theaters (AMC.US) After the trading frenzy, investors started paying attention to Meme stock. It is reported that with the surge in the price of cryptocurrencies and the surge in attention last year, crypto-related advertisements have exploded. According to a sample of 200 companies surveyed by research firm MediaRadar, the number of crypto companies that advertised more than tripled in the last year and their spending more than fivefold.

In the 2021 Super Bowl, Robinhood (HOOD.US) released its most famous ad in the financial industry. Robinhood's performance in the seven months since has led investors to buy assets based on TV ads and ignore potential risks. The company’s stock has fallen nearly 65% from its IPO price as cryptocurrency and stock trading volumes have fallen from highs during the coronavirus lockdown. Robin Hood is not running ads during the 2022 Super Bowl.

The lack of regulation in the U.S. brought a lot of attention to cryptocurrency-related advertising during the Super Bowl, but cryptocurrencies have become part of everyday American life. This high-profile Super Bowl marketing campaign also further demonstrates that the crypto industry has become a mainstream industry in the United States that cannot be ignored. Even if the risks are everywhere, there is still a lot of room for potential application opportunities in various fields.