Crypto ads absent from Super Bowl — AI firms spend big

For the third year in a row, the Super Bowl was virtually crypto ad-free with this year’s event, estimated to have been viewed by around 120 million people, instead dubbed “the AI Super Bowl.”

The so-called “Crypto Bowl” of 2022, which saw the likes of FTX, Coinbase, Crypto.com, and eToro pay millions of dollars for a few seconds of exposure, seemed a world away as artificial intelligence firms like OpenAI, Google, and Meta took center stage.

Crypto ads dominated promotional slots at the 2022 event, thanks mostly to the previous year’s bull run that saw bitcoin jump 700% between early 2020 and April 2021.

However, a massive drop in prices, coupled with a series of controversies and high-profile bankruptcies, including the collapse of crypto exchange FTX, Coinbase paying $100 million to settle an investigation in New York, and Crypto.com firing 20% of its workforce, saw them almost completely absent the following year.

This trend continued last year with crypto’s biggest names once again focusing their budgets elsewhere.

“The Super Bowl is a very US-centric event, and the next wave of crypto users will come from all around the world, not just the United States,” Kraken Chief Marketing Officer Mayur Gupta told FOX Business at the time.

He added, “If the last wave of crypto marketing was all about hype and FOMO, this current wave has to be rooted in education and awareness for the substance and true value proposition of crypto as a movement that will bring financial freedom and inclusion.”

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Indeed, crypto companies across the board appear — for now at least — to have matured, turning away from flashy, big-money promos in favor of a more sensible, informative, and regulation-focused approach.

AI companies on the other hand are desperate to convince the wider public that the technology isn’t that scary after all (see Google’s syrupy family-friendly effort) and are willing to stump up the record $8 million per 30 seconds of prime Super Bowl ad space.

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