Seattle’s Porch marks new era as public company with first Super Bowl ad touting home services tech
Editor’s note: A previous version of this story incorrectly stated the amount Porch paid for a Super Bowl ad. The story and headline have been updated.
Porch has been on quite a run the past several weeks, and it culminated Sunday night with a surprise Super Bowl ad for the Seattle-based tech company.
The 30-second spot aired right after the game ended and was a rapid-fire display of the various ways people can love their homes using Porch’s home services tech. National ads that ran during the game were reportedly priced at $5.5 million for 30-second units. Porch’s ad ran in the extended Seattle area and was much less expensive.
Porch went public at the end of 2020, raising more than $322 million through a merger with PropTech Acquisition Corp., a publicly traded special purpose acquisition corporation, and a private investment from Wellington Management Company.
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Just three weeks after that stock market debut, Porch announced four acquisitions for more than $122 million. The company also disclosed its preliminary financial results for 2020, saying that it expects a net loss between $53 and $55 million for the year, about $20 million further into the red than previously projected in its public filings.
Porch was started by serial entrepreneur Matt Ehrlichman in 2012 after his own experience building a home convinced him of the need for a better online marketplace for home services.
The company reinvented itself as a provider of enterprise resource planning (ERP) and customer-relationship management (CRM) software to home services companies. Porch now makes money from software licenses and transaction fees that it receives when connecting homebuyers to movers, insurance agents, home automation and security firms, TV/internet companies and other service providers.
All of those various service possibilities were flashed across the screen on Sunday — and into the homes of roughly 100 million television viewers.
Top ads of Super Bowl LV
Porch didn’t make the top 10 with its ad, but another Seattle tech company did.
Amazon landed at No. 3 on USA Today’s Ad Meter, where fans rank their favorite commercials. The tech giant aired a 60-second ad starring Sexist Man Alive Michael B. Jordan, in which the “Black Panther” actor portrays one woman’s fantasy of Alexa in human form.
Rocket Mortgage was the runaway favorite among 57 ranked commercials, according to USA Today. Two ads starring actor Tracy Morgan took the top two spots — the first time that’s happened in the newspaper’s ratings since 2007.
Amazon did take the top spot when it comes to views on YouTube. On the AdBlitz channel featuring scores of ads, the Alexa ad racked up 77 million views. T-Mobile was following behind with 27 million views for a Tom Brady/Rob Gronkowski ad that didn’t even make it to the big game.
