Super Sunday (For Advertisers)

Advertisers reportedly spent a record $6.5 million to hawk their goods for 30 seconds during the Super Bowl broadcast. Amid the usual beer and movie ads, we also watched celebrities tout electric cars… smart devices… and cryptocurrency wallets. Popular crypto site Coinbase paid to air nothing but a scannable QR code for 60 seconds. Curiously, the ad worked. The sudden influx of traffic overwhelmed the app. Maybe the company should have spent a little more time bolstering its servers before dangling a mystery in front of 117 million viewers. But Charles Hugh Smith, my guest for this week’s Session, believes that kind of poor planning is by design. He recently posted an essay about U.S. consumerism on his blog, https://www.oftwominds.com.