If you tuned into the Super Bowl last Sunday night you may have been invested in the football or there’s a chance you were like me, curious about the commercials. With the hottest ticket in advertising, airing a commercial during the championship game costs an average of 7 million dollars. It is no surprise that we see industry giants scoop up this prime real estate to sell their products.
Among one of the many advertisements, you may have noticed one that followed a run-down animatronic band. To the tune of the 1985 hit- Don’t You (Forget About Me) by Simple Minds, the old plush characters discover a new passion for life, music, and friends in the Metaverse. Meta likely spent around $13 million for the 60 second ad’s single run during the Super Bowl. Deemed the most expensive VR-related ad to date, Meta used this platform to promote their Quest 2 headset and of course the Metaverse itself.
Bigger than Football
While Meta has been making progress in the widespread household adoption of VR technologies, they have also been making headlines outside of their multi-million-dollar advertisement.
Meta threated to shut down within the European Union in an official report following and ongoing data dispute. All Meta-owned apps including Facebook, WhatsApp, Messenger and Instagram are at risk of being cut off in Europe due to data transfers between Europe and the U.S. that are deemed unethical in terms of privacy protection.
The European Court of Justice ruled the data transfer process between the EU and the U.S. is a breach of privacy according to their regulation. Lawmakers in Europe are looking to implement new legislation that will dictate how EU citizens’ user data gets transferred across the Atlantic.
While the EU believes that the current data protection standards are not being met due to a reliance on US servers, an unnamed source from Meta spoke with CNBC last week stating: “the simple reality is that Meta, and many other businesses, organizations and services, rely on data transfers between the EU and the U.S. in order to operate global services.”
Meta wrote: “If we are unable to transfer data between and among countries and regions in which we operate, or if we are restricted from sharing data among our products and services, it could affect our ability to provide our services, the manner in which we provide our services or our ability to target ads.”
Meta believes an agreement will be reached sometime this year, however if it is no longer allowed to use current processes or similar alternatives, it will “likely be unable to offer a number of our most significant products and services, including Facebook and Instagram, in Europe.”
European lawmaker Axel Voss tweeted in response, “Meta cannot just blackmail the EU into giving up its data protection standards, leaving the EU would be their loss.”
What does Sprinklr tell us?
In the past month there have been 26.94K mentions of Meta’s tensions with the EU. These posts have reached 4.41 million feeds with an overall sentiment score of 17.3% positive mentions and 82.7% negative mentions. News outlets dominate this conversation in online spaces, accounting for over 17K of the 26.94K mentions. Blogs, Reddit, and Twitter account for the remainder of mentions within the past month.
It is important to note the significant influx of mentions about Meta and the Metaverse on Super Bowl Sunday, however their tensions with Europe were in fact outshone by their creative, musical advertisement. On Sunday, February 13th there was a total of 450 mentions of the ongoing privacy issues between Meta and the EU, however 4.16 million mentions surrounded the Meta Quest 2 Super Bowl ad.
Although Meta successfully steered the online conversation towards their newest VR product, it is important to analyze other, smaller conversations that are ongoing. There is always more to the story when it comes to the worlds leaders in social media technology.
