The Psychology of a Super Bowl Ad
Viewers actually like commercials during the big game. That’s instructive for streaming-TV companies.
Bud Light Seltzer and Post Malone: What’s not to like?
Photographer: Anheuser-Busch
It’s been asked before: Why, if we hate television commercials, do we love Super Bowl ads so much? The question is more relevant now than ever. As consumers ditch cable, Netflix’s new streaming-TV rivals are weighing the pros and cons of placing ads on their services.
Already 18 million traditional pay-TV subscribers may have cut the cord in the last six years, according to Nielsen data and research by Geetha Ranganathan, an analyst for Bloomberg Intelligence. The pace accelerated last year, with recent earnings reports from AT&T Inc. (owner of DirecTV) and Comcast Corp. revealing an exodus of 3.4 million and 733,000 traditional video customers, respectively. A proliferation of new streaming apps — Disney+, Apple TV+, Peacock, HBO Max — promises to see the cord-cutting trend continue this year.