Have you heard what companies are shelling out for 30 seconds of advertising at this weekends Super Bowl, $3,800,000 for 30 seconds. That's a lot of cash no matter how you slice it but when you look at it from a cost per impression basis it doesn't come close to the cost per impression of promotional merchandise.
Granted 100,000,000 million people are expected to watch this year Super Bowl, that's a lot of eyeballs but for a single thirty second ad the cost per impression is still almost 4 cents. Add to that the fact that many viewers, while they might remember a specific advertisement they often can't remember the company producing and paying for the spot. Quick think about Clint Eastwood's Halftime in America commercial from last year, do you remember the company the ad was for? If no one remembers the company what does that do to the cost per impression?
The numbers are even worse for a B2B company, of those 100,000,000 people watching the game how many would you guess are in a position to make purchases for their companies? I don't know the number but it's a good guess it's a tiny fraction of the total people watching. Seriously if IBM runs a Super Bowl ad about building a smarter planet are they getting a return on the $3,800,000 investment maybe it's just me but somehow I doubt it.
The good news for B2B companies is there are advertising mediums that are far less expensive, often more effective, and have a much lower cost per impression, the king of them all is promotional merchandise. According to an ASI study the average cost per impression for promotional merchandise is $0.004 about one tenth the cost per impression of a Super Bowl ad. In addition the same study indicated that 81% of the people receiving promotional merchandise keep it because it's useful.
I'm biased but the number just don't add up. If you're a major corporation with money to burn then maybe a Super Bowl ad is worth the investment, but it you're a B2B company looking for a low cost effective way to promote your brand and products with a specific target market, promotional merchandise beats a Super bowl ad all day long.