The cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase was in the throes of a major traffic jam during last night's Big Game featuring the Cincinnati Bengals and Los Angeles Rams. Coinbase spent a whopping $14 million alone in the QR ad campaign, showcasing QR codes to nearly 100 million viewers at the time with the potential of winning $1 million in crypto.
Chief Product Officer Surojit Chatterjee announced the revolving issues on his personal Twitter account amid the game, relaying that the exchange saw "more traffic than...ever encountered." These realities only make sense, given the Super Bowl ad space is among the most prime real estate and expensive in the commercial campaign realm.
@coinbase just saw more traffic than we've ever encountered, but our teams pulled together and only had to throttle traffic for a few minutes. We are now back and ready for you at https://t.co/ZUJqRlnZPH. Humbled to have been witness to this. #WAGMI
— surojit (@surojit) February 14, 2022
These Coinbase login problems began to arise no sooner following its commercial at around 7 PM EST. From 7:20 and onward, Coinbase customer service began showing various issues, with Downdetector reporting on its own Twitter feed that "Coinbase is having problems." Chatterjee voiced that the site had to "throttle traffic for a few minutes" as the many millions poured in from the QR code-riddled ad.
Related Article: Coinbase User Accounts Emptied After Hackers Gained Access to Their Crypto Wallets | Couple Discovered $168K Crypto Stolen
Fortunately, Coinbase was back up and running at 8:23 PM ET. Its efforts with a QR code bounding around a screen for 60 seconds, akin to an age-old DVD player screensaver, proved seemingly worthwhile. Those who could access Coinbase were privy to $15 in free bitcoin with the chance of potentially winning $3 million in alternate prizes after signing up for a free Coinbase account.
The stunt proved extraordinarily expensive. Typical ad space amidst the Super Bowl ranges from $3 to $5 million. Only this year, the price tag went up by about a million dollars. USA Today reported that a 30-second long Super Bowl LVI commercial would cost one a clean $6.5 million to $7 million, depending on the exact slot placement.
Coinbase unsurprisingly wasn't the only marketing campaign amid the Super Bowl attempting to hype cryptocurrency. Various other cryptocurrency exchanges dove headlong into the fray, including Crypto.com, which sported Los Angeles Lakers small forward LeBron James in its ad, and FTX, which had comedian Larry David in its commercial. eToro likewise showed a 30-second long ad in an attempt to alleviate naysayers on the crypto uprising.
Chatterjee announced much later into the evening that the historic Coinbase Super Bowl commercial wrought over "20 million hits on our landing page in one minute." He adds that these clicks were "6 times higher than our previous benchmarks." Truly unprecedented and rewarding for the crypto exchange. The CPO even shared a picture of the top charts on the iPhone app store, with Coinbase second to Peacock, beating out the Pepsi Halftime Show, NFL, NBC and HBO mobile apps.
