At around $7 million per 30-second spot, an ad for Sunday’s Super Bowl LVI did not come cheap. But with more than 112 million viewers having tuned in for the Los Angeles Rams victory over the Cincinnati Bengals, the companies who shelled out that cash would likely think it was worth it to have their spot viewed by that many eyeballs. That was the case for AMC Networks, a company that prides itself on taking a very targeted approach to its niche streaming services and marketing the platforms to very specific audiences, but went very big during the big game with a spot promoting its flagship platform, AMC Plus.

“Specifically for the Super Bowl ad, we felt it was important for AMC Plus, as an extension of our linear business, to let audiences know that the final seasons of franchises like ‘The Walking Dead,’ ‘Better Call Saul’ and ‘Killing Eve’ are now going to be premiering on AMC Plus,” AMC Networks streaming chief Miguel Penella said during a fourth-quarter earnings call with investors Wednesday. “But that is not typically what we do to acquire customers. What we do to acquire to customers follows a very disciplined approach that includes creating audience profiles and really targeting our marketing campaigns based on our understanding of the customer lifetime value and with a very specific target for the acquired customer. And that’s something that we do systematically, in a disciplined manner, and we manage that on a daily basis.”

AMC Networks’ Super Bowl LVI ad featured the first look at its Anne Rice series “Interview With the Vampire,” footage from the sixth and final season of “Better Call Saul,” the middle third of the 11th and final season of “The Walking Dead,” upcoming anthology “Tales of the Walking Dead,” the fourth and final season of “Killing Eve” and several other shows coming to AMC, AMC Plus or BBC America this year.

A longer 60-second version of the TV spot was released online, which teased the upcoming series “61st Street,” “Dark Winds,” “Moonhaven” and “That Dirty Black Bag.”

During the call Wednesday, Interim CEO Matt Blank said: “I think one of the things you’re going to see, in addition to the aggressive pursuit of subscribers for our streaming services is, as we begin a year with our best content in history, you’re going to see us doing a lot of marketing to support that content and support the brands that we offer as a backdrop to all of the direct and specialized marketing that we do in the streaming world. The Super Bowl spot was just one part of it. I think that with the type of content that we have this year, that was an important opportunity to take advantage of that content and get our message out more broadly to consumers.”

AMC Networks CFO Christina Spade noted that the company is “seeing more traffic, more buzz” around its streaming platforms and interest from advertisers. The company ended 2021 with more than 9 million paid streaming subscribers and is targeting between 20-25 million by 2025.

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