Pornhub is making headlines for announcing that it's incredibly mild "Super Bowl ad," featuring an elderly couple looking lovingly into each others' eyes on an idyllic park bench, was rejected by CBS.
While many believe the hype that big, bad CBS blocked poor, well intentioned Pornhub's G-rated spot, the fact is that this is more likely a cheap stunt to get free publicity: There's no way this ad could have played in the Super Bowl. It's not even the right length.
Super Bowl spots are sold in 30-second increments. This year, those half-minute spots went for a hefty average of $3.8 million — although one advertiser spent more than $4 million. Pornhub's ad is 20-seconds long ... which simply makes no sense.
Pornhub's press release states that "a CBS spokesperson offered this brief response via email to the website's proposal: "CBS Television Network Standards do not permit advertising related to pornography. Therefore, we cannot accept your submission."
This is well known to everyone in the ad industry, and thus Pornhub could not have expected CBS to say yes. It's highly unlikely that the company had any intention of shelling out the millions to play this spot.
Promoting an ad as a "banned" spot is an increasingly popular marketing technique.
In fact, dating site "Big and Beautiful" claimed that NBC Sports rejected its ad in 2012 for featuring a plus-sized model in its scandalous ad. The network told us that the site never even sent in an official request to buy a spot.
Adultery dating site Ashley Madison has also claimed to have submitted ads that were banned by Super Bowl bigwigs.
But it is a decent publicity strategy.
"I remember one year when the networks wouldn't allow one of the Bud Light spots in the game, so Bud actually released it online as, 'the Super Bowl ad the networks wouldn't let you see,'" Tanin Blumberg,an account director at Goodby, Silverstein & Partners and Budweiser Super Bowl ad veteran, told BI. "It was pretty smart ... got about 1 million views on YouTube in just a few days."
Pornhub is asking users to vote on whether or not they believe the tame ad should air or not.
Pornhub did not respond immediately to a request for comment.
Watch the ad below:
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