Crypto Bowl? Who Scored in the 2022 Superbowl of Crypto Ads?

Despite a market dip, the Super Bowl proved to be a massive success for some of the top firms in the crypto industry.

Coinbase, FTX, Crypto.com and eToro all spent millions on the hottest advertising slots in the world, gaining historic exposure.

Likely the most memorable ad from the night was Coinbase’ one-minute long commercial featuring nothing but sixty seconds of a bouncing QR code leading viewers to a promotion and signup page.

The ad proved to be so popular that Coinbase actually shut down for a bit, overwhelmed by the amount of traffic as tens of millions of football fans scanned the QR code to get to a single landing page.

Kate Rouch, the exchange’s chief marketing officer, said that Coinbase had load-tested the site to handle millions of simultaneous hits, but the Super Bowl volume was “astounding in comparisons to our projections.”

“We saw over 20M+ hits on our landing page in one minute — volume that was historic and unprecedented,” she said.

“We also saw engagement that was 6 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.”

FTX joined the lineup with its crypto ad featuring comedy legend Larry David, who plays a time-traveling skeptic who shoots down good inventions like forks, coffee, and FTX. David reportedly “loved” playing the role, even though he’s still not a fan of cryptocurrency.

“We need to meet people where they are — and that means embracing skepticism,” FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried said in a statement. “A lot of people who are now the biggest advocates of crypto once had significant reservations.”

Crypto.com managed to score star basketball player LeBron James to play two versions of himself. In the ad, old LeBron advises young Lebron to “call your own shots” as Crypto.com’s trademark catchphrase “FORTUNE FAVORS THE BRAVE” rolls across the screen.

eToro took a more general approach to their Superbowl ad, marketing the platform as an all-in-one crypto, stocks and idea-sharing space, asserting the “the power social investing.”

According to a report from AdWeek, crypto firms were shelling out an average of $7 million for each 30 second clip of advertising space, making the Super Bowl likely the biggest marketing campaign of all time for the crypto industry.