As Super Bowl XLIII looms, my friends and I are anticipating the winners and losers. Not the football players, of course. What really matters during the Super Bowl is the ads: corporate America’s annual attempt to have the most innovative, funniest, most aah-inspiring spot during the world’s most highly viewed hours of broadcasting.
Even after a year of a seemingly bottomless stock prices, $4-a-gallon gas, bailout after bailout, falling home values and rising unemployment, advertisers are shelling out a record-setting $3 million for 30 seconds of airtime (and that doesn’t include production costs, which can run $1 million apiece). Why? Because the Super Bowl audience continues to grow, year after year, or so say the Nielsen TV ratings people. Last year, the Super Bowl was broadcast into 48.7 million homes, where 97.4 million people watched it.
In years past, Super Bowl commercial breaks were like movie premieres; if you wanted to talk about the show the next day, you had to watch the ads during the game. Now, I can easily see the ads online, allowing me to use a commercial break the way that nature intended, to grab a fresh beer and load up on crab dip. I don’t need to stay glued to the set to see the best ads. But still, advertisers are betting that I will.
So I wonder, does the Super Bowl audience still justify an advertiser’s investment? Share your thoughts, and stay tuned for next week’s post-game wrap-up.
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Here’s what confounds me: with all the cutbacks and cut offs in spending, how can advertisers still justify putting so many eggs in a one-medium basket? I will be interested to see what surrounds this year’s spots - a web-based follow-up? A Twitter campaign? How will the myriad “new” media be incorporated to sustain the investment? I just don’t believe the Super Bowl is still the Super Bowl of advertising. It’s just another, albeit highly visible, way to try to connect with customers, if only for a highly priced 30 seconds.
I think that’s the beauty of Super Bowl advertising, and why so many companies are willing to pony up to play ball. Since the ads can be just as entertaining as the game itself, the social media conversation is all but guaranteed to follow.
Instead of discussing the most attention-grabbing ads around the water cooler Monday morning, viewers will spark myriad discussions about the ones they liked on sites like Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. These interactions will help extend the value of the pricey spots long after the game and create a greater sense of engagement with the brand.
“How will the myriad “new” media be incorporated…”
“…viewers will spark myriad discussions…”
It’s like being in Pee-Wee’s Playhouse and the secret word is myriad.
In this day and age, spending three million on 30 seconds of Super Bowl time is one of the more anachronistic media moves I can think of. Which is precisely why the only companies buying time are those that always have. I haven’t seen the full roster of advertisers, but I suspect there won’t be many rookies in this year’s line up.
Good job, Jason. You cracked the code! Who says the advertising world is populated exclusively by little brains?
For my money, Monster’s “I wanna be in middle management” spot with the kids is still my favorite…
With ad revenues down and TV stations laying off people because of budget problems, I have to say I’m pleased to watch the Super Bowl ads this year. For NBC affiliates with a few, precious local availabilities, maybe this is a chance to make up some money they’ve lost recently.
On the national level, I’m hoping that those who spent the 2.4 million bucks for a :30 will not waste their money and my time as viewer with overly creative ads that don’t sell me the product.
In my mind, the Budweiser ads are always worth some attention. I don’t even like Budweiser. However, I do think the ads are smart and some of them even tempt me to buy the product…maybe.
Honestly, I just hope the game is worth watching. That might make me stick around for ads that air in the 4th quarter.
You would think that it makes good sense for these guys to spend all of this money. But in this wild wild world we now live in where everyone is corrupt, crooked, or crazy, I am starting to doubt if this makes any real sense. I can just picture all these spenders at some golf outing where they bet big money on each hole bragging on how much they spent on their super bowl ads. Commercials are commercials but 6 million a minute? That is nuts. Where does the money come from? I wonder how many folks these companies have terminated to spend this type of money? On second thought I don’t think I will watch the commercials at all – I don’t have that kind of money. Maybe if they had a price limit like the best commercial for 100k???
I think it’s funny and absurd that so many educated Americans would even waste the many hours each year on the stupidest f*&@ing ‘game’ in the world called ‘football’! It’s just an updated version of Gladiators with people getting their kicks watching the paid help beating each others brains in, a quintessentially vile and violenet American blood sport to go with the crude and sophomoronic nature of our society…basically we have no ‘culture’ or ‘civilization in this country just a giant f*&@ing ‘market’ in which to sell more stupid, insane garbage to unconscious idiots whose heads are so far up their asses they’ll never see the light of day! What a great f*&@ing country this is, full of sound and fury meaning nothing at all….just so much f*&@ing non-sensical blather to sell for a buck…wow what a dismal f*&@ing failure this country has become, not even Obama can save us from this slide into the dustbin of history…it amazes me to see the mo-rons who ‘value’ garbage like football but won’t spend an extra dollar on education or health care or food for poor people, it makes me sick it really does, gawd I f*&@ing hate this country!!!
(Editor’s Note: We’ve amended some of the language in this post but left the original thoughts and intent.)
Joe: I find it interesting that despite your obvious loathing for America, you’re still here.
Could be worse for me, I guess. I could have to mask my anger and express my views with some curse words wrapped in a lot of keyboard symbols snd superfluous quotation marks. Go get ‘em Joe!