The Super Bowl is still three months away, but already Fox has sold 90% of its in-game Super Bowl ad inventory (57 of 63 units) with individual ads reaching as high as $2.7 million. What's driving the early ad sell out? Some unique and clever tie-ins from Fox are changing the Super Bowl ad game.
Of course, the Super Bowl will be heavy on car and beer commercials, but this year, Fox and Myspace (both owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. [NYSE: NWS] behomoth) will team up to allow in-game Super Bowl advertisers to have their commercials placed on a special Super Bowl site on MySpace. Those advertisers will be able to add extra videos to the MySpace site which will be promoted during the Super Bowl. Who do you think would like to place extra videos on the MySpace site? Movie studios!
But that's not all Fox is doing to lure movie studios to buy up Super Bowl ad space. Hang onto your hat, because this next part is the real kicker (no pun intended). The 2008 Super Bowl game will air on February 8th with a pre-game telecast featuring a red-carpet arrival area for celebrities attending the event. This will give movie studio advertisers added publicity by allowing them to show off the stars of their movies before the game similar to a movie premiere or awards show. Who will host this red carpet event? Ryan Seacrest of course. Yes, the Ryan Seacrest of American Idol, E! News and countless other celebrity event hosting gigs. I never thought I'd see the day when "Ryan Seacrest" and "Super Bowl" could be used in the same sentence.
So we've reached a new era of Super Bowl advertising with the coupling of sports and movie stars. Believe it or not, this idea is just bizarre enough that it will probably work. For the 2009 Super Bowl, they'll probably add the NFL players to the red carpet. Where will it end?
What do you think? Thumbs up or thumbs down to the Super Bowl red carpet? From a movie studio's perspective, it seems like a great idea, but from a fan's perspective, I don't like it. On Super Bowl Sunday, I want to see football, not Ryan Seacrest.
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