The Crypto Bowl: Did the Big Game Give Crypto Exchanges a Boost 1 Month Out?

It’s been more than a month since cryptocurrency exchanges FTX, eToro, Coinbase and Crypto.com broadcast their first Super Bowl commercials in what many have dubbed the "Crypto Bowl." Having ramped up mainstream marketing over the past year, these companies were hoping a turn on advertising’s biggest stage would jolt growth in their respective user bases and familiarize more Americans with the concept of cryptocurrency. At the very least, they hoped the act of buying such sought-after spots could lend some much-needed credibility to the industry. NBCUniversal received up to $7 million for a 30-second slot during the Big Game, which aired on Feb. 13, so it's worth asking: Was the investment worth it? How many of the 112.3 million Super Bowl viewers across all linear and streaming platforms became crypto converts—or at least checked them out? "Crypto.com is very pleased with the impact of our Super Bowl campaign," said Steve Kalifowitz, CMO of Crypto.com. As evidence, Kalifowitz mentioned figures from search intelligence platform Captify that showed Crypto.com's ad beating the other cryptocurrency exchanges, with search volume for Crypto.com up more than 120% on game day and higher than 660% the following Monday. A study by analytics firm iSpot.tv also revealed Crypto.com had the highest unaided recall among viewers compared to other cryptocurrency campaigns. FTX and eToro didn't provide comments by deadline. Coinbase deferred to an earlier blog post it released after the Big Game with initial results. To expand on the answer, Adweek reached out to several third-party data companies to provide a look into what happened. We wanted to understand how these ads affected consumer attention, sentiment and actions taken with regards to each company and the crypto space as a whole. It's worth noting, with the exception of Coinbase, these Super Bowl ads have continued to run across TV and on social and digital channels, potentially drawing in more viewers on a smaller scale. (The version of eToro's ad on its social channels has removed references to cryptocurrency at all.) What the numbers show In terms of which Super Bowl commercial viewers liked most, the results of USA Today's Ad Meter show Rocket Homes and Rocket Mortgage’s "Dream House With Anna Kendrick and Barbie" came out on top. FTX's ad starring Larry David outranked the other cryptocurrency exchanges, finishing in 16th place out of 64 commercials, while Crypto.com's spot showcasing LeBron James ended up in the bottom half. Although Coinbase's floating QR code attracted much attention and praise from members of the marketing community, USA Today's nearly 150,000 panelists rated it dead last, just behind eToro's commercial involving a cloud of people flying around a city recruiting new investors. Perhaps because FTX's ad was more popular than the rest, its website received the largest increase in traffic. “FTX seems to have come out a little ahead and did get the biggest percentage gain on the day of the game,” said David Carr, senior insights manager at digital intelligence company Similarweb. Still, Carr noted, any interest generated from the Super Bowl appears to have faded away as no brand has seen a sustained flow of online visitors. Despite how consumers might feel about their ads, Coinbase and eToro saw the biggest jumps in app downloads in the week following the Super Bowl compared to the same week in January, according to mobile data firm Sensor Tower. FTX saw a more modest increase, while Crypto.com’s numbers actually dipped slightly. By early March, however, app downloads for all four companies had fallen well below January levels, indicating whatever boost they received from the Big Game was likely fleeting. Further figures from metrics firm Data.ai (formerly known as App Annie) followed the same arc for Coinbase and Crypto.com. Coinbase shot to the No. 17 ranking in downloads for non-gaming apps after the Super Bowl, up from 59th in January. But it had fallen to 148th by the week of March 10. Crypto.com fell from 59th to 99th to 143rd in those same weeks of January, February and March, respectively. FTX and eToro didn't crack the top 1,000 apps and thus lacked detailed numbers from the firm. Twitter conversations about the four cryptocurrency exchanges spiked on game day. And while the majority of chatter was positive, according to social media analytics company Sprout Social, sentiment on the platform since the Super Bowl has been slightly more positive than the prior period, while neutral tweets have declined. FTX, Coinbase and Crypto.com all saw a single-point bump in brand awareness among the American public in the week following the Super Bowl. Given the context, however, it wasn’t a significant change. "The big takeaway here is that these brands’ ads didn’t necessarily have a big impact on the average consumer, who may have heard of cryptocurrency but struggles to understand it," said Charlotte Principato, financial services analyst at data intelligence company Morning Consult. Principato added that around 19% of U.S. adults currently own cryptocurrency. On a broader scale, the Crypto Bowl arrived amid a long slump in the prices of major cryptocurrencies. After reaching record highs in November 2021, for instance, bitcoin’s value has fallen into a general decline ever since. The prices of ethereum and Coinbase’s stock—the only public company of the bunch—followed a similar trajectory. While an upward blip starting in early February could be attributed to hype around the ads, the actual broadcast on Feb. 13 doesn’t seem to have affected prices much. In the end, the TV spots were stuck swimming against a tide of bigger market forces. An unsatisfactory mix As web traffic and app download numbers show, the ads certainly caught some viewers' attention, if only briefly. Weeks later, amid ongoing crypto price doldrums and a hyper-saturated news cycle, that blip in attention seems to have faded. The ads also failed to bring the adrenaline shot to crypto values that some investors and acolytes of the space were expecting. Perhaps if the Super Bowl had happened in November, when prices were at an all-time high and Crypto.com had just locked in naming rights on one of the country's most prominent sports venues, the story might have been different. The zeitgeist could have better matched the sense of inevitability and FOMO presented in some of the ads in a way that made cryptocurrency feel more ascendent in culture. As it was, though, cryptocurrency’s Super Bowl debut created a splash, but nothing that appears comparable to the waterfall of news and events and chatter that typically flood the category. Viewers who did bother to look into cryptocurrency for the first time were introduced to a space in flux, roiled by volatility and imminent regulatory uncertainty. The ads may have made more people initially check crypto out, but no commercial can overcome a complex user experience or an asset with a future that seems to change by the moment.