The coin exchange spent more than 300 billion dong on an incredibly simple ad, the effect was so great that the whole website collapsed

On February 14, the American Professional Rugby Super Cup, commonly known as the Super Bowl, officially took place. It’s not just a mere sporting event, but it’s also America’s most-watched television show of the year. In addition, the Super Bowl also has distinctive cultural features, thanks to performances from popular music stars at halftime, or for television audiences, invested promotional videos.

Thanks to a live audience of more than 100 million people, the cost of TV advertising at the Super Bowl is also among the highest in the world. The amount that a unit has to spend for an American broadcaster to broadcast a 30-second advertisement at this year’s Super Bowl is about 6.5-7 million USD (nearly 150 billion VND), and this number continues to increase. through each year.

Before the explosion of Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies in the past few years, Super Bowl 2022 saw the first time the appearance of advertisements from cryptocurrency exchanges. Besides some exchanges like Crypto.com, eToro and FTX; the big Coinbase did not miss this opportunity.

As the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the US, it is predicted that Coinbase will invest in a huge advertising segment. However, the actual advertisement released by Coinbase made everyone… fall back because of its simplicity.

Specifically, the Coinbase ad is simply an image of a QR code moving across the screen – nothing more, nothing less.

This idea of ​​Coinbase is based on previous DVD players. When at rest, the DVD player usually displays a logo that moves across the screen. The reason why manufacturers choose this image is to prevent image retention that some previous CRT or Plasma TVs encounter if displaying a still image for too long.

In the US, the image of the DVD logo moving across the screen is considered a joke. Because, with its freely moving trajectory, it is very rare for the DVD logo to fall right into the right corner of the screen. So, in some lucky cases where this situation happens, it turns the atmosphere into… festive celebration like some big event just happened.

And, Coinbase took advantage of the simplicity and humor of the idea to turn it into an advertisement for its cryptocurrency exchange. When scanning the QR code, users will go to Coinbase’s website to register for an account and receive a free amount of 15 USD (converted into cryptocurrency).

It is known that Coinbase spent up to 14 million USD (318 billion VND) for this ad. Perhaps, some people will regret that with such a large advertising cost, but all Coinbase can transmit in 1 minute is just a QR code running back and forth on the screen.

However, Coinbase’s unique strategy has proven to be effective. Coinbase had more than 20 million visits to its website in 1 minute, 6 times higher than the previous record. The Coinbase App on the App Store (iPhone) also jumped from 186th to 2nd in popularity.

Even so, the traffic was so large that Coinbase was paralyzed for about 1 hour. Surojit Chatterjee, Coinbase’s product manager, said on Twitter that this was a “historic and unprecedented” event.