Celebrities provide the common denominator between ads and linear TV content

In addition to boasting the biggest TV audience in the history of the Super Bowl, this year’s Big Game showcased an array of star-studded ads that kept TV viewers engaged during the breaks in the on-field action. Leveraging that star power during the Super Bowl is a long-tenured strategy among marketers, but it doesn’t need to be limited to a single day.

The celebrities that appear in Super Bowl ads often have extensive backgrounds in the entertainment industry, providing an array of direct links between the ad and a variety of TV shows and movies. And when advertisers know when those programs are airing, they can create the ultimate contextual connection between advertising and TV programming.

Here’s an example. Jason Alexander, a key ingredient in the formula that made Seinfeld one of the industry’s most beloved sitcoms, appeared in a pair of Mike’s Amazing Mayonnaise ads that ran during Super Bowl LIX. If Chefler Foods, the maker of Mike’s Amazing Mayo, wanted to re-air the ad after the Big Game and tie it to its common denominator—Alexander—it could use TV listing data to identify the more than 53,000 different program airings featuring the actor slated to air through March 31, 2025.

“A brand that wants to garner greater value from the investments it makes in advertising creative and talent can do so by identifying the most relevant programming coming to market. Gracenote facilitates this across thousands of channels weeks in advance.”

– Kendall Smith, Senior Director, Business Development, Gracenote

While Alexander is most well known by many for his role as George Costanza on Seinfeld, the 90s sitcom is far from the only link between the actor and the Mike’s Amazing ad. Between Super Bowl LIX and the end of March, Alexander has 52 acting credits in 531 scheduled airings of TV shows and movies in addition to Seinfeld. He also has guest star credits in more than 3,000 airings across 20 different TV show airings, voice credits in 151 airings across 18 different programs and movies and an assortment of guest and host roles on other shows. He even has 1 credit as a musical performer on the 2023 TV special Dick Van Dyke 98 Years of Magic.

The use of contextual targeting in digital advertising has gained prominence in recent years, particularly in the absence of granular audience data. In the world of linear programming—on both traditional and streaming channels—contextual advertising based on talent opens up a wealth of opportunities that are based on the most common of common denominators.

Uber Eats’ “Century of Cravings” spot, for example, has obvious ties to football, but the collected works of celebrities in the ad provide advertisers and agencies with more than 19,600 connecting points to leverage after Super Bowl Sunday. That’s how many times the stars of the ad (Martha Stewart, Matthew McConaughey, Kevin Bacon, Sean Evans and Charli XCX) will be featured in TV shows and movies across both traditional TV and streaming services through the end of March 2025.

As brands and agencies continue to explore the opportunities that contextual advertising affords, connecting the talent within ads and the programming they appear in forms the basis for the most common of common denominators. And unlike in CTV, where brands don’t know the exact programs they’re investing in, linear programing data provides explicit insight into data, time, program type, network and all aspects of the scheduled program, including parental rating, genre, featured actors and more.

The cross-platform nature of linear programming provides brands and agencies with more investment options than ever. And that means when they’re thinking about leveraging talent, they should be looking at all of the ways—and channels—that talent shows up.