Coinbase is launching a $15 million TV ad campaign that aims to tout the merits of using cryptocurrency in a language that sports fans understand: Pizza.
FOX Business has learned that the U.S.’s largest crypto exchange is set to run three separate commercials across four channels airingthe NBA playoffs starting Wednesday.
The idea behind the commercials, news of which hasn’t been reported yet, is to underscore how complex and expensive traditional payment methods are compared to crypto, which is settled almost instantly and cuts out the so-called “middlemen” like banks and payment service providers.
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“We’re under the illusion that when we use credit cards or Venmo, things are happening instantly, but they’re actually just part of very complex plumbing that’s masked by a digital interface,” said Coinbase’s chief policy officer Faryar Sharzad.
To showcase this, the tongue-in-cheek ad shows the process a pizza pie would go through if it was money in today’s system. The commercial begins with the pizza going through several approval and authorization stages. The narrator is heard saying “If pizza worked like this, you wouldn’t like pizza.”
The commercial follows the pie through more stages, mimicking the typical credit card transaction. Several different people take bites and slices from the pie, symbolizing the middlemen that want to take a proverbial slice of the pie. The narrator says “this is pretty much what happens to your money whenever you spend it or send it.”
Finally, the pizza goes through a door marked “surcharge,” to indicate the credit card fees customers pay on their transactions.
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The commercial ends with the pie getting picked up by the delivery boy who turns to the camera and says, “we deserve a better system, easier, simpler, faster. That’s how crypto works.”
The 60-second ad and two 30-second ads will air starting Wednesday on TNT, ESPN, ESPN2 and ABC and run through June 9.
The new launch, which cost Coinbase $15 million, comes just two days after the conclusion of another of its TV ad spots which aimed to showcase Bitcoin’s value over time by illustrating how much pizza a person could buy with one bitcoin in 2012 compared to 2024. The price of Bitcoin has increased over 500% since 2012.
“These ads capture something bigger than just Coinbase,” Coinbase’s Chief Policy Officer Faryar Shirzad tells FOX Business. “It shows we have a monetary system that’s outdated and expensive and there’s a much better way to go about things.”
The ad launch comes just two days after the conclusion of another TV spot Coinbase bought to highlight Bitcoin’s value, also using pizza as a visual to show how many boxes of pizza you could buy with Bitcoin since it was created in 2009.
Data shared with FOX Business shows that the bitcoin pizza spot has been viewed 3.15 million times across social media.
Coinbase’s NBA playoff spots come after it opted not to advertise during the Super Bowl in February.
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It also dovetails with Coinbase’s continued push in Washington to get Congress to pass fair crypto policy, despite pushback from key Senators like Elizabeth Warren and SEC Chairman Gary Gensler.
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