Nintendo Promoted 'Mario Kart 8,' Nintendo 2DS With $9.7 Million TV Ad Campaign

spent a fair amount of money to ensure the success of

. The company spent $2.8 million on national TV ads during the first four months of the year (January 1 through April 30, 2014). Nintendo spent an additional $9.7 million during the following two months (May 1 through June 29, 2014) -- a move that was no doubt fueled by

release. In early June, Nintendo announced that it had sold

worldwide.

Sean Muller, co-founder and CEO of iSpot, told Benzinga that the "Outdoors" ad has been performing well for Nintendo. He said that it has a 9.2 rating on iSpot (versus the industry average of 5.6). "[That rating] measures…how much consumers are responding to the ad in relation to how much they spend on the campaign," said Muller. "We track all the social activity around the ad -- all the searches in relation to the estimated spend of that campaign. [The] 9.2 rating is very high, so that campaign is working very well for them." Nintendo has already produced 17 different commercials this year, and not every penny has been allocated to

and the Nintendo 2DS. But it's clear that majority of Nintendo's ad dollars are being spent on one new game.

Nintendo has not updated its official

sales figures since before

was released. As of March 31, 2014, Nintendo had sold

Wii U consoles worldwide. If every

buyer also purchased a Wii U, total console sales would have surpassed the seven million mark by now. Even then, some critics fear that

will be the worst-selling chapter in the series.

recently published a piece explaining why this may occur. In April, Benzinga

the sales data of Wii U's biggest games, none of which have been able to surpass their GameCube predecessors. Thus far, GameCube has been Nintendo's least-successful console. The company sold

between 2001 and 2006. Disclosure: