Since the arrival of the Switch, Nintendo has made a serious attempt to improve its advertising and marketing efforts. For example, it was only yesterday we saw Spanish tennis star, Rafael Nadal, make an appearance in the trailer for Mario Tennis Aces.
These positive developments continue, with GamesBeat reporting Nintendo was the top video game brand, in terms of television advertising dollars spent, during the month of May. After seven months with Sony in the lead, Nintendo finally surpassed PlayStation advertising.
According to GamesBeat and its partner iSpot.tv (a real-time television ad measurement company), Nintendo’s total estimated budget was around $8.6 million, with the company airing 10 commercials more than 4000 times. This in return generated 427.3 million impressions.
The “Best Summer Getaway” campaign spot by Nintendo had the highest costs, estimated at $2.3 million. The spot targeted a family-friendly audience, with the budget split across various networks including Nick Toons, Nick and Teen Nick.
PlayStation wasn’t far from Nintendo, with an estimated spend of $8.2 million on a total of four advertisements. In contrast, these were aired 928 times and generated 387.5 million impressions. Detroit: Become Human was the main spot for Sony, targeting an older market and airing on ESPN, Adult Swim and TNT during programming such as the NBA.
Below these two were FoxNext Games, King – known for Candy Crush – and MovieStarPlanet.com.
In the month of May, gaming industry television advertising in general dropped to an estimated spending amount of around $24.6 million. In comparison, the estimated costs during April were priced at about $31.8 million.
[source venturebeat.com]
Comments 35
Hail. Hail Nintendo!
Not to be a pessimist, but shouldn't they wait until they have major titles to advertise before going big on it?
Great to see the contrast within a few years between the Wii U's terribly underwhelming marketing campaigns and this.
It's almost like looking at a new company altogether.
@-Juice- its the beginning of summer basically in may when kids are out and etc... or at least in usa idk about other continents, so this is a good time for it.
@-Juice- They do have four evergreen titles in Mario Kart, Splatoon, Zelda, and Mario and Mario Tennis is coming soon, which could have mass appeal.
they were pretty goods ads, so im glad to see Nintendo doing better ads.
I'm glad Nintendo learned from the Wii U era. I see Switch commercials regularly watching North American TV and I see it the odd time on Korean TV here, too.
Good, they learned from Wii U and they are retaining that knowledge. The vast majority or people don't come to websites like NL or IGN or other games based news. They hear what their friends say, or they see ads on TV or YouTube. And frankly I think they need to do a lot of ads on YouTube too, because a lot of younger people don't watch regular TV anymore. I know I don't. I technically have cable, because it comes with my internet, but I haven't used it in 2 years. It isn't even plugged in.
They not getting oitsold by sony in the US because of advertising dollars, they getting outsold because a lack of exciting games.
I see so many Switch ads now. I remember when I was shocked to see a Smash Wii U commercial on tv, considering before that, I didn't see ANY Wii U ads.
Too bad most of it was promoting the 3DS and its games from 2011 to 2013! All hail the New 2DS Zelda cover- like that needed 10,000 commercials to promote!
This is really interesting to read about!
Nintendo will be Everywhere.
Everyone will know about Nintendo.
Nintendo will be watching you, even from toilet.
Not related to the topic, but this need to be asked: where the heck is the xbox commercials, because I barely see ANY form of xbox commercial?
Probably cost a fortune to pay Nadal for the Mario tennis ad
So unlike Nintendo. They’re really going all in on Switch and not simply sitting on an already decent install base. It’s a big sign of ongoing success and ambition.
When you have a good line up of exclusive evergreen titles this is one way that you sell a lot more units without big new releases.
It’s also the sort of thing that catches the eyes of big third party publishers - when Nintendo has a big marketing budget they’re a more interesting platform to be on because there’s more spotlight they can potentially give to your games.
Nintendo knew the Wii U could never be saved and did the right thing not wasting money by throwing big marketing budgets behind it. Smart decision to ride out the Wii U with little spend as possible.
Good to hear. Another advantage of being focussed on one system. With DKC selling well they've kept decent momentum up.
Much better than the Wii u effort
When my kids are watching cartoons, normally there are two or three Nintendo ads during each ad break. Labo, Splatoon, Arms and Mario Tennis are all over kids T.V.
@-Juice- More advertising will in turn bring more sales, and with the profits made, Nintendo can probably pay for more advertising for the new games announced this month.
All well and good, but you try but a copy of Tropical Freeze in the UK. Out of stock online at both Amazon and Argos. Not sold physically anywhere in my town. No wonder it’s plumetted down the charts.
@kobashi100 My thoughts exactly.
I’m still partially convinced that Nintendo had questionable faith in the Wii U and used it as a placeholder console to remain in the business until the tech and economics were there to make the Switch a viable option. Once they knew the Wii U was unlikely to succeed, part of the marketing budget went towards company storage coffers and/or Switch R&D.
@Varkster your avatar thingy is fantastic
I do see a lot of Switch adverts on the kids channels that I'm forced to have on 24/7. I can believe they are top for advertising as I can't remember the last non Nintendo advert I see.
We live in a world where advertising matters.
They've got enough killer games now they should be advertising the heck out of Switch any way they can. And that's besides the whole hybrid aspect and motion control advantage found on the platform.
Funny all I ever see is Playstation commercials. I’ve NEVER seen ANY Switch commercials on tv EVER!! And I live in NY too!
@FX102A or they thought that bc of the success of the Wii, it would just carry over to the Wii U, at least far more than it did. But it was obvious after a while that the console was all but abandoned. I think they had bigger plans for it- IMO the tennis game that we see now is what the Wii U version would have been like. But it was caught in between consoles, IMO.
Nice! The marketing push continues! So glad somebody lit a fire under their panties. Keep it up! I'm kinda dreading E3 at this point. I'm trying to spend less money...but this has been a painful year on the bank account.
YouTube and social media should be where most of your advertising money is spent. Not saying Nintendo isn't doing this, just saying in general. Who watches TV anymore?
i tell you once again nintendo.
you are not in the seal of quality era, where developers begging to be on your platform.and gamers buy your games because there was no competition.
nowadays you need both gamers and developers support to succeed.
So start listening to them, give developers the tools they are missing put your money there. release the 64gb+ gamecards. give them software updates, and dont act harsh.
as for the gamers, stop listening to nintendo slaveboys that tell you to stay the same and not to change. their species are shrinking. listen to the modern gamer, give them at least more quality titles besides the one you make. a great online system with every modern feature.
let people stream your games via twitch(its promotional) dont be annoyed because gamers are annoyed. do something with it.
eventualy you will get your wii numbers. im pretty sure.
@PALversusNTSC "nowadays you need both gamers and developers support to succeed.
So start listening to them, give developers the tools they are missing put your money there. release the 64gb+ gamecards. give them software updates, and dont act harsh."
What do you think they've been doing with the Switch? It's easy, cheap, and attractive to develop for, and Nintendo went out of their way to accommodate developers needs as much as possible.
"as for the gamers, stop listening to nintendo slaveboys that tell you to stay the same and not to change. "
Who the hell are these people? I've never seen anyone here argue that.
" listen to the modern gamer, give them at least more quality titles besides the one you make."
Which is what they've been doing with the Switch.
" a great online system with every modern feature.
let people stream your games via twitch(its promotional) dont be annoyed because gamers are annoyed. do something with it."
I want Nintendo's online to be competent, but I don't really need a bloated PSN clone. As for Twitch streaming, Nintendo seems fine with that. It's just YouTube they have a weird relationship with.
"eventualy you will get your wii numbers. im pretty sure."
They're already on their way to getting Wii numbers by doing exactly what they've been doing for the past year or so.
@FX102A @kobashi100
I think they launched it with optimism but quickly realised it was going to fail, so decided to just manage it through with minimal investment. They were right, too. First party support was still good-if not vintage-through to Mario Maker in 2015 and they used it to launch some great new ideas like Splatoon. I kept saying this when people were clamouring for price drops and big ad campaigns during that time, it was never going to happen. Very canny management by Nintendo.
Total opposite of what Sony is doing with ps vr. I feel like they're already giving up on it. And the second they give up, it's doomed just like Vita. They're stupid because vr is the future. It's already the best way to play certain games by far (Skyrim, Wipeout, dirt rally, etc.) even tho vr is in its infancy
Good on Nintendo, doing what they should have done for the Wii U...but for PlayStation, they technically don't even need to advertise to much anymore. Everyone basically has a PS4.
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