The Super Bowl is one of the toughest places in advertising to make noise, especially when commercials cost $10 million on average, loaded with celebrities and special effects. Which is why we zagged, with a long-copy, 5-second spot, featuring a jpeg.

It not only stood out like a sore thumb, we purposefully made it seem like we were hacking the broadcast, starting with a glitchy, branded, old-school “please stand by” art card. This gave way to a static long-copy slide, which spoke to the Reddit community and their mindset, championing the power of small groups of passionate people to achieve amazing things.

Too long for anyone to read, the ad forced viewers to either pause, rewind or go online to get the message, which was loaded with easter eggs, including a nod to the sub-Reddit “r/superbowl,” which is actually “Superb Owl,” home to a group of passionate owl lovers.

The term “budget” should be kept in context as the Super Bowl is the most expensive media event on earth, where 30 seconds goes for $5.6 million, just for the media. But when you consider the typical production values of Super Bowl commercials, with celebrities, licensed music and epic special effects, most Super Bowl commercials cost upwards of $10 million.

Compare that now to the scant one million dollar price tag on Reddit’s 5-second Super Bowl commercial, which was just for the media alone- not a single penny was spent on production.

And as for “breakthrough,” Superb Owl hauled in a staggering 6.5 billion impressions, which is close to double that of the most expensive Super Bowl commercial of all time, “It’s a Tide Ad,” coming in at $17.5 million for the production alone, with several 30 second spots airing in every quarter throughout the game.