Coinbase had been prepared to handle millions of simultaneous hits during its Super Bowl ad, but chief marketing officer Kate Rouch said "the volume we experienced was astounding."
Coinbase has revealed that its Super Bowl advert delivered 20 million hits to its landing page in a single minute — far more than its engineering teams had anticipated.
The exchange sparked intrigue in its 60-second spot with a QR code that was bouncing around on the screen, prompting many viewers to scan it with their phones.
Although Coinbase had been prepared to handle millions of simultaneous hits, chief marketing officer Kate Rouch said "the volume we experienced was astounding in comparison to our projections."
Describing the traffic as "historic and unprecedented," she added:
"We also saw engagement that was six times higher than our previous benchmarks. Understandably, this volume led to us temporarily throttling our systems. Hats off to our engineering team for getting the site back online so swiftly, and allowing us to welcome more people to the cryptoeconomy."
Coinbase's innovative approach to advertising has attracted praise — not least from Adweek, which described it as the best ad on the night. Several companies also took it upon themselves to create their own versions — including its rival FTX. Rouch said:
"Crypto has a loyal community who communicate in memes, so it was important to me personally to see that the community had fun with this moment."
She went on to explain that the ad was inspired by "the curiosity and intimidation we know many people have about crypto" — and intended to be "surprising, confounding and delightful":
"We wanted to pique their interest by doing something different, something that’s never been done in the history of Super Bowl advertising — a playful, low production nod to a popular Internet meme that invites action and discussion both in the living room, and on social media."
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Was This a Dotcom Moment?
In a blog post posted on Coinbase's website, Rouch shrugged off comparisons to the Super Bowl in 2000, which was saturated with ads for internet companies before many of them collapsed when the dotcom bubble burst. Addressing speculation that crypto businesses face a similar fate, she said:
"We don't think about it that way and judging from the early response we’ve seen, Super Bowl viewers don’t either. The ethos of crypto is about new models of ownership, creativity and community — building each other up, not tearing each other down. The number of crypto ads at the Super Bowl is yet another signal that crypto is bursting into the mainstream, and at the center of the cultural zeitgeist. What a proud day for crypto!"
Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong said the campaign had been a resounding success — with the exchange surging in Apple's rankings and becoming the second most-downloaded free app.
But according to Bloomberg, the crypto companies that spent millions on Super Bowl ads saw app downloads decline during the week of the game. Apptopia's vice president of insights Adam Blacker said:
"Once you hit the top of the app store it creates this self-fulfilling prophecy. More people today and tomorrow are going to look at the top of the app store and they’re going to see Coinbase is up there, and they’re going to download it because it’s just in their face."
