CBS has sold out of 85% of ad inventory for Super Bowl LVIII, according to multiple sources familiar with negotiations, despite a TV sales market muted by economic uncertainties.

The Super Bowl LVIII marketplace is distinctive, with the game not only available on CBS linear and streaming but also a new kid-friendly option on Nickelodeon as well as a Spanish-language game being sold separately on TelevisaUnivision. These opportunities have left some marketers reexamining their Big Game ad strategies.

Paramount, which owns CBS and Nickelodeon, declined to comment on Super Bowl negotiations. TelevisaUnivision also declined to comment on its Super Bowl negotiations.

Ad Age breaks down these Super Bowl broadcasts and how they’re being pitched to advertisers:

CBS

“Back in May or June, I would say they’re going to have a tough time—[CBS] got the shitty end of the stick in terms of years and what's going on with the economy,” said one media buyer. “But based on very recent conversations with [CBS], they seem to be in a very good place. I would say less than two handfuls worth of inventory left to sell, and it seems all of their premium positions are spoken for at this point.”

The core Super Bowl LVIII broadcast will air live on CBS from Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas on Feb. 11, 2024. Multiple media buyers said CBS parent Paramount was pitching the game to advertisers as soon as a few weeks following 2023’s Big Game, continuing the recent trend of selling Super Bowl inventory at a much faster pace than was the norm pre-pandemic.

Compared to CBS’s 85% sellout, last year Fox announced it had sold 95% of its Big Game ad space in early September, and NBCU hit 85% sellout in July the year prior. Notably, Fox’s sales faltered as the 2023 game neared due to market factors, such as the crypto implosion and ramping economic uncertainties that still persist; this delayed the media company from fully selling out until months later.

Despite continued economic uncertainty, media buyers noted the speed and smoothness of CBS’s dealmaking. Pricing for the 2024 Super Bowl is said to be in the $7 million range for a 30-second unit, with some variance based on broader deals across the Paramount portfolio, according to multiple sources familiar with negotiations. The numbers are consistent with Fox’s record rates from earlier this year.

Streaming

CBS’s Super Bowl broadcast will also stream on Paramount+ and on mobile through NFL+. The platforms will stream a simulcast of viewers’ local CBS station, mirroring the national and regional ads one would see watching at home on linear. While streaming has upended most of the TV space, the Super Bowl remains one of the last linear TV properties to maintain a massive audience, so streaming isn’t make-or-break for client interest.

More news: Football stars hype NFL on CBS for Paramount+ 

Fox reported that this year’s Super Bowl was the most streamed ever, averaging 7 million streams according to Adobe Analytics. The number was inclusive of devices tuning in across the Fox Sports app, Fox.com and the Fox Now app as well as the NFL’s digital properties—the NFL mobile app, the NFL Fantasy mobile app, NFL.com, the NFL connected TV app and NFL+—but it doesn’t account for co-viewing for each stream. Overall, the 2023 Super Bowl’s streaming presence was a mere fraction of the initially reported 113 million viewers across Fox’s linear and streaming broadcasts, with the total number later rising to 115.1 million due to an error in Nielsen’s data collection (which didn’t appear to impact the streaming count).

“The largest share [of audience] is always going to come from the linear model,” said a second media buyer. “But the Paramount+ audience is important and the different access points in the NFL+ audience on mobile, although it'll be a relatively small share—probably a low- to mid-single digit—is still an important component of it … all of the different access points we believe are going to lead to a larger audience overall than in the past.”

Nickelodeon

Paramount surprised advertisers earlier this month when it announced a family-oriented Super Bowl simulcast on Nickelodeon. The slime-ified game builds on previous NFL games on Nick, including an annual Christmas Day match that will continue this year. Super Bowl LVIII on Nick will feature “eye-popping on-field graphics, guest reporters, virtual filters and more,” according to Paramount.

For advertisers, the simulcast is an added bonus for core Super Bowl buys, multiple media buyers confirmed. Paramount previously confirmed to Ad Age that the ad placements in the Nick broadcast will mostly mirror those on CBS, with the added option to air different creative in the same slot on Nick.

However, not all Super Bowl advertisers are kid-friendly. Adult categories alcohol and betting and some TV and movie trailers won’t be able to advertise in the Nick game. And some advertisers may choose to opt out of Nick for reasons outside of suitability. Ad Age counted eight national alcohol ad buys and two betting ads during the 2023 Super Bowl. (Ad Age's definition of a Super Bowl commercial includes all national spots between the coin toss and end of play.)

Advertisers who remain in the CBS broadcast but exit Nick open up additional inventory for the children’s channel. Paramount’s Super Bowl sales team is said to be waiting until CBS sales have been finalized in order to know what inventory it has to sell, but Nick unit prices are in the range of $200,000 to $300,000 according to the buyers.

The second media buyer said clients in the fast food, snack food and auto categories have hesitancies marketing to children.

“What is an auto doing targeting 11-year-olds?” said the buyer. “Of course, we do expect there to be some parents that are watching that broadcast, but as we all know, watching a broadcast with 2- to 11-year-olds—you might not be fully tuned into everything.”

Also read: What kids thought of Cannes Lions-winning ads

The second buyer said demand from clients for the Nick game is mixed, and their investment team has spent the weeks since it was announced discussing how the addition may or may not warrant a pivot for clients’ established Super Bowl strategies. Considerations include whether or not to take the option to air separate creative on Nick and run a separate pre- and post-game campaign on Nick as well as if the Nick audience will be additive to CBS’s broadcast or if its audience count will be those who would have tuned in to CBS anyway. While it is unclear if it’s additive or not, the last NFL simulcast on Nick averaged 3% of the game’s total audience, a source familiar with the game confirmed.

The second buyer also said clients who are barred from advertising in Nick’s Super Bowl or those that choose to opt-out may see the loss as a hit to the value of their buy, and ask to renegotiate initial buys. However, the buyer also noted, “CBS isn’t going to be in the business of giving cash back straight away.”

“The problem is that until creatives are submitted a week or two before the date of the Super Bowl and officially signed off on by the NFL League and each network, nothing’s locked in 100% on Nick,” said the first media buyer. “Once they see the creative, if there’s something alarming in there or something that conflicts with regulations, Nick will have to boot them out of the show flow and that would essentially open up another spot that they could be left to sell with only a week left to the game. Nick is not going to be locked and loaded until very close to game time.”

TelevisaUnivision

In 2024, the Spanish-language Super Bowl broadcast will air on TelevisaUnivision for the first time. The past two games’ Spanish broadcasts have been on Fox and NBCU’s owned Hispanic networks, Fox Deportes and Telemundo, respectively. CBS partnered with ESPN Deportes for its most recent Super Bowl in 2021.

In past years, multiple media buyers said, the Spanish Super Bowl broadcast had been packaged into buys in the same way the upcoming Nickelodeon game is. But TelevisaUnivision is taking its game to market separately from Paramount. Premium placements are priced between $300,000 to $400,000, with other units averaging $300,000, per multiple media buyers.

“The Hispanic feed is something that within just the past couple of years has become a mandate of the networks,” said the first media buyer. “Years ago, you didn’t have to buy the Hispanic feed; they would ask for dollars to go against it, but it wasn’t a mandate. Now, the past two to four years it has become a mandate. This year is just a little bit different—you’re losing that Hispanic [as a bonus to the core broadcast], but you’re getting Nick.”

The buyer said the difference is that while Nick is a new incremental addition for Super Bowl marketers, and a lower price of entry for those wanting to scoop up the open spots, TelevisaUnivision’s separate pitch is a better option for clients interested in reaching the Hispanic audience, plus also at a more accessible price. The buyer said that while plenty of clients are buying both CBS and TelevisaUnivision, a high volume of them are selecting one or the other.

Media agencies have said they’re already discussing how the unique spread of next year’s broadcasts across the three networks will impact advertisers’ creative strategy. But it is still too early to see how it will all play out—in addition to pulling out all the stops for a buzzy spot on CBS, preceded by a teaser campaign, media agencies are discussing whether clients could burden the cost of an additional campaign on Nick as well as Spanish-language creative on TelevisaUnivision.

~ ~ ~
CLARIFICATION: This story has been updated with information about Nickelodeon ad sales received after publication.