However Coinbase felt the strain to ship standout artistic 4 years after making a Tremendous Bowl splash in 2022 with its well-known 60-second spot displaying a floating QR code — a defining second that helped Coinbase stand out in opposition to a discipline of rivals throughout the so-called “Crypto Bowl.”
Since that second, crypto’s star has pale. FTX, a one-time Coinbase competitor that additionally marketed in that Tremendous Bowl, has since been bankrupted and seen its founder Sam Bankman-Fried imprisoned for fraud. A frenzied crypto selloff this month, in the meantime, has seen Bitcoin’s worth drop 20% because the begin of 2026.
Coinbase was the one crypto model that invested in a Tremendous Bowl spot this 12 months, and it did so regardless of business headwinds and the rising value of Tremendous Bowl media — NBCUniversal charged upwards of $10 million for some 30-second in-game spots.
“There aren’t many boards with 120 million individuals watching,” Staples mentioned.
Coinbase believed the Backstreet Boys had been the perfect car for its message, and it wasn’t deterred once they realized “early on” that T-Cell was working with the band for its personal Tremendous Bowl spot.
The truth is, Staples mentioned, Coinbase doesn’t thoughts the comparisons of its advert with T-Cell’s, as a result of the approaches are distinct — and each manufacturers may profit from the chatter pitting the 2 in opposition to one another.
Plus, “They’re very totally different approaches to promoting,” Staples mentioned.
Andrew Panay didn’t say whether or not T-Cell knew that Coinbase was additionally airing a Backstreet Boys spot. However the truth that each manufacturers did was testomony to the band’s enduring cultural sway, he mentioned.
“The Backstreet Boys have legacy, they’ve freshness, they’ve long-time followers, new followers, female and male followers. Gen Z and boomers know their music. They’ve extraordinarily broad enchantment,” he mentioned.
Neither manufacturers specified the full funding worth of their campaigns.
Promoting business insiders had been amused and stunned by the Backstreet Boys bombardment Sunday evening. “Two advertisements that includes the Backstreet Boys was not on my Tremendous Bowl bingo card,” Jon Laughlin, chief artistic officer at Laughlin Constable, mentioned.
Many creatives who spoke with ADWEEK most popular the Coinbase spot.
“The winner for me, for certain, is the Coinbase spot,” mentioned Annika Welander, CEO of artistic company Someoddpilot. “I like artistic that punches to this point out of its weight class.”
Amir Sahba, founder and CEO of artistic company Thinkingbox, nonetheless, felt T-Cell received the Backstreet Bowl: “T-Cell gave us one thing to really feel. Coinbase gave us one thing complicated to determine in actual time.”Regardless of the various reactions, T-Cell’s spot ranked a lot larger than Coinbase’s on EDO’s TV Outcomes rankings, which measure the affect of every advert within the recreation based mostly on rapid engagements which might be most predictive of future sales. On that evaluation, T-Cell’s advert was seventeenth out of 98, whereas Coinbase’s ranked forty seventh.
