Turnabout is Fair Play: Guess Who Ran a Super Bowl Ad?
By Nadav Manham
I just blogged that Pepsi isn't running a Super Bowl ad. But guess who just did? Here's what the CEO had to say (here too).
Why would this internet company decide to advertise on T.V.? The opportunity cost relative to advertising on the internet is not high, as the company already gets a lot of free advertising there. Plus the Super Bowl audience likely allows the company to reach more internet naifs/future users at lower cost than any other way of spending ad money.
It's also interesting that the product being advertised is in many ways the product that least needs it: plain old search, which is a monopoly enjoys high market share.
I really liked the ad; it was minimalist, easy to understand, and moving in a kind of mystical way--"look at the power of search technology to expand your knowledge and change your life." Does anyone associate Yahoo search or Bing with any of that? That's one component of the moat.
The author of this post is president of Elera Advisors LLC, an investment advisory company focused on value-oriented manager selection. Mr. Manham is a Manual of Ideas contributor and editor of The Investor's Consigliere.