Mobile games developer Supercell’s Super Bowl commercial for Clash of Clans has been more popular on YouTube than rival ads from an array of traditional brands.
The “Revenge” ad aired during Super Bowl XLIX on 1 February, and has since been watched nearly 36 million times on YouTube .
That’s double the 17.9 million views generated so far by T-Mobile’s #KimsDataStash commercial, which starred Kim Kardashian, and also ahead of ads from brands including Budweiser, Nissan and Snickers.
Supercell’s ad starred actor Liam Neeson, and spoofed his much-quoted “I will look for you, I will find you, and I will kill you” speech from 2008 film Taken, with his anger this time focused on a defeat in Clash of Clans. “I don’t know you, BigBuffetBoy85, but if you think you can humiliate me and take my gold, think again. Oh, I am coming for you with lots of Barbarians and Dragons. I can’t wait to destroy your village, while you beg for mercy, but you will get no mercy. I will have my revenge... You will regret the day you crossed AngryNeeson52.”
Supercell was one of several mobile games firms advertising during the Super Bowl, when 30-second spots around the match’s US television coverage famously cost as much as $4.5m.
Developer Machine Zone advertised its Game of War - Fire Age game with a commercial starring model and actor Kate Upton , although it has only been watched 5m times on YouTube so far. Another developer, uCool, ran an ad for its Heroes Charge game.
The ads are the latest sign of the growing marketing budgets for the most popular “freemium” mobile games, which make their money from in-app purchases and in-game ads rather than upfront purchases of the games themselves.
Supercell made $892 million in 2013 from two games alone: Clash of Clans and farming strategy game Hay Day. The company has yet to declare its financial results for 2014, but in December, research firm Superdata claimed Clash of Clans alone made $1.8 billion that year .
The growth of these and other lucrative freemium games was initially boosted by advertising on Facebook and within other mobile games, but in 2014, companies like Supercell, Machine Zone and Candy Crush Saga-maker King expanded their marketing activities to television.
With their games making hundreds of millions (or even billions) of dollars in annual revenues, $4.5m for 30 seconds of Super Bowl airtime - Supercell actually splashed out on a full minute - represents small change for these companies.
Were they effective? Clash of Clans and Game of War - Fire Age are the top and second-top grossing games on Apple’s App Store in the US at the time of writing, with Heroes Charge in 21st spot in the chart.
They are also benefiting from follow-on viewing on YouTube, which claims that in the first six weeks of 2015, its users have watched more than 7m hours of Super Bowl ads and teasers - up from 6.3m hours in the whole of 2014.
