Super Bowl commercials—behind the business of the Big Game

The kickoff to Super Bowl LVI is still more than three months away, but marketers have been laser-focused on the upcoming game since early this summer, clamoring for commercial time with such intensity that NBC was almost completely sold out of ad inventory before the NFL season even began. Despite the cost to air in the Big Game hitting record-setting levels — and the decline in linear TV ratings — advertisers still see the annual football championship as one of the best opportunities to reach consumers en masse. Below, Ad Age has compiled answers to some of the most commonly asked questions about the Super Bowl and its advertising as marketers look ahead to the most-watched annual event on TV. How much does a Super Bowl commercial cost? The Super Bowl certainly doesn't come cheap. The price of a 30-second commercial in the Big Game fluctuates a bit each year, and even in the same year, it can vary from brand to brand. NBC, which holds the exclusive broadcasting rights for the Super Bowl in 2022, is said to be asking as much as $6.5 million for a 30-second ad during the game, up from 2021 when CBS was seeking around $5.6 million per 30 seconds. The price tag can also change if a brand buys an ad package that includes airtime during other tentpole events such as the upcoming Beijing Olympics or FIFA World Cup, both of which will also be broadcast by NBC next year. Read: NBC nearly sold out of Super Bowl LVI commercials How sought-after is Super Bowl airtime in an average year? As the most viewed event on TV each year, the Super Bowl seldom fails to attract advertisers, but NBC has experienced what seems to be unprecedented demand ahead of Super Bowl LVI. This past July, seven months before kickoff, the network reported it was already 85% sold out of Big Game commercial inventory—an ad sales benchmark usually not reached until January. Much of that interest has been driven by smaller “mid-tier” brands aiming to appear during the Super Bowl for the first time, said Mark Marshall, president of advertising sales and client partnerships at NBCUniversal. But while smaller brands buying airtime was also a trend identified ahead of Super Bowl LV, from a demand comparison, CBS didn’t even hit the 80% sold out milestone until just two months before the game. Read:• Super Bowl LV's big commercial void makes room for newbies • Super Bowl 2021 commercials: Who's buying what Who’s advertising during the game this time around? The upcoming Big Game will likely see the return of traditional Super Bowl advertisers, like Anheuser-Busch InBev. But if the 2021 ad game taught us anything, when AB InBev decided to forego a Super Bowl ad for its Budweiser brand, it's that nothing is a guarantee. Some other brands that have become regular advertisers in the game include: Verizon, an official telecom partner of the NFL, has appeared for four consecutive years; and automaker Hyundai has run an ad in 12 of the past 13 games. While most brands won't announce their Super Bowl game plan until early in the new year, already TurboTax said it will return for its ninth consecutive game. Cryptocurrency exchange platform FTX also recently confirmed that it will appear during Super Bowl LVI—the first sign of what many are anticipating to be a rush of multiple crypto-related ads in the game. When did the craze around Super Bowl commercials start? When you ask people in ad land which groundbreaking Super Bowl ad first spawned America’s fascination with the game’s commercials, many will point to the same source: the dystopian masterpiece by Chiat/Day and acclaimed filmmaker Ridley Scott that is Apple’s “1984” ad. The Orwellian spot had a then-unprecedented budget of $1 million, and despite that being its only major airing, the investment swiftly paid off, helping boost the company to $3.5 million in sales of Macintosh computers soon after. While there have been other forebearers of modern Super Bowl ads, such as Xerox’s humorous 1976 “Monks” commercial, most observers pinpoint “1984” as the spot that started it all. Watch historic Super Bowl ads in Ad Age's archive Where can I watch the Super Bowl? Super Bowl 2022 will air on February 13, 2022, on NBC, as well as its streaming platforms like Peacock, and Hispanic broadcaster Telemundo. Major U.S. networks take turns airing the Super Bowl every year, with broadcasting duties rotating between NBC, CBS and Fox over the past couple of decades. Since 2000, CBS has aired the game eight times, Fox seven times and NBC five times (inclusive of the upcoming game in February). ABC also hosted the game twice in that period, the last time being when the Pittsburgh Steelers trounced the Seattle Seahawks in 2006. The Super Bowl has only aired on the same network in back-to-back years once during its history, in 1993 and 1994, when NBC was the broadcaster. Likewise, the annual game has only been simulcast on more than one channel on one occasion, back in 1967 during Super Bowl I, when viewers had the option of watching it live on either NBC or CBS. Which offers a better return on investment: the Super Bowl or the Olympics? Comparing a commercial in the Super Bowl to one in the Olympics is a bit like comparing apples to oranges. The former has been dubbed the “Big Game” by marketers for a reason: It’s a once-a-year opportunity to net about 100 million viewers simultaneously, and as a result, seen as a prime opportunity to go all-out with a flashy marquee ad that—for some brands with longer commercials—can cost more than $10 million in airtime alone. On the other hand, events like the Olympics are strung out over two weeks or more, leading most advertisers to spread their ad buys across several units. In terms of ROI, the Super Bowl is more comparable to live TV events like the Oscars, which despite ratings declines are still highly regarded by advertisers who are willing to shell out millions of dollars. Read: Everything you need to know about Olympics advertising Are Super Bowl ads the same everywhere? While many major Super Bowl advertisers pay millions of dollars for their ads to run nationally, there are also local ads that run across the country. Reddit, for example, ran a commercial in New York, Chicago and San Francisco in 2021, reflecting on its role in the GameStop and Robinhood stock saga. Of course, local commercial time fetches a fraction of the more than $6 million dollars per 30-second spot NBC is asking. The Super Bowl’s ad load gets even more different once you look outside of the U.S. to international markets that carry the game, where brands and broadcast regulations both vary significantly. In Canada, for example, viewers once had the option to watch the exact same game—commercials included—as their neighbors to the south. But recent court rulings have now made the Super Bowl’s airing there a hodgepodge of both Canadian and American ads (the latter sometimes stumping for brands that aren’t even available in Canada). Read:• Reddit's regional Super Bowl ad is a tribute to Wall Street bets• Why Canadians can't watch most American Super Bowl commercials

Super Bowl commercials—behind the business of the Big Game

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