Advertisements that caught the attention of cryptocurrency trading platforms were ubiquitous during last year's Super Bowl. larry david reacted grumpily to inventions in several old outfits in an FTX ad. A bunch of people were flying like bees through the air at an eToro ad. And a QR code appeared on the screen for Coinbase.
At the Big Game this year? Crypto ads are nowhere to be found.
In the months since the last Super Bowl, the cryptocurrency industry has fallen on hard times, especially FTX, a cryptocurrency exchange that filed for bankruptcy in November. Its founder, Sam Bankman-Fried, was arrested in december on charges that he used billions of dollars of FTX client deposits to finance political contributions, lavish real estate purchases and trading in his hedge fund. (He has pleaded not guilty to charges that he participated in widespread fraud).
In 2022, cryptocurrency companies spent a total of $39 million buying Super Bowl venues, according to an analysis by Kantar, a data and consulting firm. Alfredo Troncoso, an analyst at Kantar, said that โfinancial services underperformed in 2022,โ largely because crypto ads failed to achieve a strong return on investment.
One of the few nods to the crypto industry in Sunday's game was from Limit Break, a gaming company, posting an ad saying the company was giving away digital tokens.
Since then, other advertisers have taken their places. Mark Evans, executive vice president of ad sales for Fox Sports, which is airing the Super Bowl, said that "several units were in a category that had a spectacular explosion earlier in the year: the cryptocurrency category." Its disappearance this year, he added, "created a little more inventory."
