The biggest night of the year for professional sports also is the biggest night of the year for advertisers. Businesses are willing to spend millions for ads that run during the Super Bowl. Why? Because those ads are watched by more than 100 million people who are glued to the TV.
A recent Harris Poll showed that 82% of respondents who planned to watch the Kansas City Chiefs face the Philadelphia Eagles on Sunday in Super Bowl LVII on Fox were excited about the game, 76% were looking forward to the ads, and 71% said they were looking forward to the halftime show.
Bottom line, according to the poll, is that three of every four Super Bowl viewers Sunday will be watching the ads closely. They won’t be heading to the bathroom or the refrigerator.
Social Media Chatter
Many new commercials are created for the Super Bowl. The commercials feature well-known celebrities, emotional stories, topical humor, cutting edge photography and graphics, just about anything to grab the viewers’ attention.
Social media conversation during the Super Bowl often revolves as much around the commercials as it does the game. Declarations of winners and losers in post-Super Bowl reports on media outlets often include commercials.
Fox announced Monday that all the advertising time for Super Bowl LVII was sold out. Mark Evans, executive vice president of ad sales for Fox Sports, told The Associated Press that a few 30-second spots went for more than $7 million. Most 30-second spots went for between $6 million and $7 million.
Crypto Implosion
Evans said more than 90% of Super Bowl LVII ad time was sold by the end of the summer, earlier than usual. Then sales slowed. Concerns about the economy played a role in the slowdown, Evans said, as did the implosion of crypto-currency businesses after FTX filed for bankruptcy in November and its founder was arrested and charged with a scheme to defraud investors.
Four crypto companies — FTX, Coinbase, Crypto.com and eToro — aired ads during last year’s Super Bowl. Evans said two crypto advertisers had commercials “booked and done” and two others were “on the 1-yard line” for this year’s Super Bowl, but after the FTX news became public, all four crypto firms backed out. Or were those crypto commercials banned by Fox? Some reports say that’s really the case.
Sold Out Last Year Too
NBC sold out its Super Bowl ad space last year and said some 30-second spots were sold for as much as $7 million, an increase from the maximum $6.5 million in 2021.
Anheuser-Busch is the biggest Super Bowl advertiser once again this year, with three minutes of air time. Doritos, M&M’s, movie studios, streaming services, automakers and tech companies also will make their presence felt Sunday. For an entirely different message, there also will be two ads totaling 90 seconds from the “He Gets Us” campaign that promotes the message of Jesus Christ.
