Crypto Companies Spent Millions on Splashy Super Bowl and NASCAR Ads. Americans Remain Wildly Uninterested.
Photo by Rich Fury/Getty Images
Crypto companies have poured millions of dollars into splashy promotional efforts, including Super Bowl ads, a NASCAR racecar, and stadium naming rights, but it’s all failed to move the needle in getting more Americans interested in investing in cryptocurrency.
The Pew Research Center took two polls, one in Sept. 13-19, 2021 and one in July 5-17, 2022, asking Americans the same question: “Have you yourself ever invested in, traded, or used a cryptocurrency such as Bitcoin or Ether?”
For both polls, only 16 percent said yes, showing the overall interest in crypto unchanged over the roughly 10 month period.
The massive piles of money these crypto companies lit on fire didn’t do much to increase awareness of their digital currency offerings either, Pew’s surveys showed. The Sept. 2021 poll found that 14 percent said they had heard “nothing at all” about cryptocurrency. In July 2022, that number had shrunk only to 13 percent.
As Steven Zeitchik wrote for the Washington Post, the two polls’ “results suggest that, despite numerous splashy campaigns by crypto interests, the great majority of Americans remain immune to their sales pitches.”
The period between Pew’s first survey in September 2021 and the second this past July includes Crypto.com dropping $700 million to acquire the naming rights to Los Angeles’ Staples Center as well as signing on as a sponsor of the upcoming 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar, cryptocurrency platform Voyager Digital Ltd. sponsoring NASCAR driver Landon Cassill — plus multiple crypto ads airing during Super Bowl LVI in February.
Zeitchik listed three crypto trading platforms that bought Super Bowl ads, Crypto.com, FTX, and Coinbase, and noted that airtime cost a reported $6.5 million for each 30 second segment. FTX drafted Larry David for this 60 second spot warning viewers to not miss out on the chance to invest in crypto:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eu8yDk6BMX4
Matt Damon starred in another 60-second spot for Crypto.com, declaring “Fortune favors the brave” as he compared crypto investors to historic adventurers like mountain climbers and astronauts.
Damon’s ad was the target of mockery when it aired and then again after Bitcoin crashed this summer, with Twitter users jokingly blaming the Oscar-winning actor.
Still, Damon and Crypto.com fared better than NASCAR sponsor Voyager; the company filed for bankruptcy in July. In general, the downward spiral of many cryptocurrencies over the past few months seems unlikely to entice new investors.
Nicholas Weaver, a computer security expert (and crypto skeptic) at UC Berkeley, gave the Post a memorable quote on the situation.
“That the cryptocurrency space, despite a ton of advertising, has run out of new suckers is not all that surprising to me,” said Weaver. “Although there is a sucker born every minute, that is still a limited pool of suckers.”
