The Super Bowl and Ads

Since the Super Bowl I have talked to a lot of people about the commercials, hell its good conversation and its great to remember some of the better commercials, who could forget the Apple Ad of 1984. Anyways most of the people I talked to said advertisers pay way too much for the 30-second spot, but do they really? This year’s Super Bowl was the most watched in history with 97.5 million people tuning in to watch the game. Even more interesting a whopping 107.5 million people watched the last 30 minutes of the game. That beats the 106 million viewers that tuned into the last episode of M*A*S*H.

So why did so many people tune into the game? The last largest viewing audience since this year’s super bowl was in 1996, so what has changed since then? Easy HD TV’s, they are finally more affordable and if you have a nice TV you are going to watch more TV…simple as that. You are not going to go out to a sports bar and watch their big screen, when you have one in your living room.

Each 30-second spot cost $2.7 million and I would say the advertisers got what they paid for, and the ads that showed during the 4th quarter really made out. If I was considering advertising at the Super Bowl I was definitely pick a 4th quarter spot. Also the ads really benefited the websites that were advertised. GoDaddy.com received 1.5 million views during the game, and a total of 2 million for Sunday. Myspace’s Super Bowl ads page received 14.5 million views from Sunday to Monday afternoon. I would say that is worth the $2.7 million they paid for the ad. I wonder if prices will go up for next year. In total Fox took in $156 million for the 5 hour game. It takes Google 3 days to make that much money.

Anyways this ad from 1999’s Super Bowl is great!