Article originally posted on Adweek.

Brand effectiveness doesn’t live and die in one ad slot. So why, when it comes to the Super Bowl, does the industry focus so much on the Big Game TV ads? We should be considering how the Super Bowl ad game is played these days.

Big Game ads can be a punchline for long-planned product launches or an announcement for a company reframing. But promos for ads are dropped weeks in advance, and through many small ads over platforms and time, “lots of little” is increasingly the path to brand effectiveness everywhere.

Now we know TikTok is off the bench for Super Bowl 59, the platform can do a lot of Super Bowl heavy lifting—it can be the way to let your audience in on the joke to make that game day punchline land much more effectively.

$200,000 a minute for airtime is going to make CFOs fall off their chairs. If you’ve got a cost-effective button to push to reach 170 million U.S. TikTok users and make that investment work harder, push it. Think of the poor CFOs.

But how can brands make TikTok an effective part of their Super Bowl strategies? Gather round for a data-led huddle on the best brand plays for an effective TikTok + TV strategy.

Let’s kick off, shall we?

Last year, I watched the Big Game with my ad hat on. Along with the TV ads, our team grabbed all the supporting creative that more than 60 TV advertisers put on TikTok as well. We ran several hundred of these ad creatives quickly through DAIVID, our human-trained, AI-powered effectiveness tool, which allows fast testing and creative data on huge numbers of ads while giving depth on key markers of effectiveness: attention, emotions, and brand recall.

An idea bigger than the Big Game

Our most effective TikTok campaign last year was CeraVe’s Michael Cera spoof. The reason the brand’s campaign was so successful was that the central joke of Cera being “behind” CeraVe was augmented with early content from reams of #SkinTok influencers. It was the same tone and complemented the game day joke in a way a TikTok audience would understand.

Special shout out to Paramount+, who also demonstrated a lot of thought about getting content in the can at the shoot to tell a longer story across TikTok and TV.

Despite the fact that there are over 100,000 influencers in the U.S., it’s surprising that with over 70 campaigns at the Super Bowl last year, only a handful used influencers to tell the story on TikTok: CeraVe, Uber Eats, TurboTax, Nerds, and the NFL all extended the story told on TV with native influencer additions to the central premise.

Game day ads present polished advertising craft, but that won’t cut the mustard on snappy and raw TikTok. Using influencers to enrich TV tells a story in a way that TikTok audiences are used to hearing, just like those CeraVe SkinTok influencers not breaking from their normal character to “set up” the Michael Cera joke.

No surprise that all of the campaigns heavily featuring influencers were in the top 20 most effective of our combined TikTok + TV measured campaigns.

Make sure the socks match the pants

Last year, we saw brands post poor social edits. Half of the 25 lowest-scoring advertisers for effectiveness had “confusion” as the main negative emotion evoked. This was due to shorter edits that missed the effectiveness-inducing, emotional highlights of the Big Game ads. We see this often, so this is a year-round learning: Social cuts matter.

To make them more effective, they need to be interrogated just a hard, specifically with an understanding of where they are. If they’re on TikTok, understand how users behave and make them TikTok-y—a heightened need to grab attention in the first second, then go for the jugular heroing the emotional high points.

Tease, trend, extend

Showing your ad during the Super Bowl is $7 million for 30 seconds. TikTok isn’t. Use it as much as you like: Build anticipation like Hellmann’s. Use halftime to create hype like DoorDash. Hell, even create a demand for branded merch like Dunkin’. This maximizes campaign effectiveness—and might help that CFO back into their chair.

Don’t forget the power of fast, too. We’ve not had a TikTok “You can still dunk in the dark” moment yet. As a former real-time social media guy, I can tell you that speed and a simple joke trumps cleverness every time.

Before the Kansas City Chiefs and the Philadelphia Eagles warm up for the game, we’ve already tested over 50 TikToks from brands looking to run ads during this year’s Big Game. Here’s the flavor of what we’re seeing:

• Humor has become the default emotional profile for Super Bowl ads; last year, approximately two-thirds of Big Game ads were designed to evoke humor. A lackluster 10% of those actually made us laugh. Of the tested TikTok ads to date, 85% score “amusement” as their highest positive emotion. Maybe this year, they really will make ’em laugh.
• “Confusion” is back, with 36% of TikTok ads showing that as their highest negative emotion. Will it all make sense after the Big Game?
• Attention is the first step toward effectiveness, and right now, Ritz is topping the attention scores on TikTok with some tasty game day snack ideas.

It’s 1st and 10. Get out there. TikTok is your long pass, and the Big Game ad is the receiver. What are you waiting for?