Super Bowl is considered one of the biggest sporting events in the United States and it is also one of the most-watched. Therefore, its ads are highly coveted and Coinbase, one of the world’s leading cryptocurrency exchanges, decided to use the advantage of the exposure to promote itself. A major Coinbase commercial was aired for a minute that included a QR code on the screen. Since the ad was promoting free Bitcoin, it gained a lot of popularity. After all, there was a great deal of buzz surrounding it because it was offering free bitcoin worth $15 to anyone who would sign up on Coinbase within the next two days.
Of course, an ad during the Super Bowl would also cost a lot and Coinbase also paid for the campaign quite heavily, but the exchange was also able to reap the rewards. Reports indicated that only a couple of minutes after the ad aired, the Coinbase app and website both crashed because of the heavy traffic they received. Fortunately, this outage was short-lived and the website and app were both back up within a few minutes and were operating smoothly. Even after the website was restored fully, the promotional messages could still be seen, such as ‘WAGMI’ and ‘Less Talk, More Bitcoin’.
Coinbase’s Chief Product Officer, Surojit Chatterjee, said that the platform had seen an influx of traffic higher than anticipated, but their team had managed to pull things together. He said that they only had to throttle it for a couple of minutes and were back on track quickly enough. The market community was also buzzing on social media because of the Coinbase ad. AdWeek’s editor said that the marketing department of Coinbase had achieved a major milestone with the ad. Some were of the opinion that the production cost of the ad was low for Coinbase and was not close to what a Super Bowl commercial costs.
A user also said that even though Coinbase had crashed, their ad was clever and original. Crypto companies have been trying to expand their target audience and sports fans are a perfect choice. CryptoCom and FTX were some other crypto platforms that also aired ads during the sporting event. The world’s largest crypto exchange in terms of trading volume, Binance, decided to steer clear of the Super Bowl frenzy but did urge people to exercise caution before they invest in crypto. It was AFCON’s official crypto exchange.
As Binance contributes about 50% of the crypto trading volumes globally, its competitors are now trying to claim some of its share, which has resulted in heavy investments in ads. This is certainly not the first time that Coinbase has decided to invest in sports advertisements. It is also the NBA’s official crypto exchange. But, FTX is the leading crypto exchange in the sports industry, has partnered with Major League Baseball. Last year, FTX also purchased the naming rights for the California Memorial Stadium. Recently, Tezos also entered into a partnership with Manchester United, one of the most popular football clubs in the world.
