$8 million for 30 seconds: Tracking the staggering rise of Super Bowl ad costs
When it comes to television audiences, nothing compares to the Super Bowl. The NFL’s championship game accounts for nine of the 10 most-watched broadcasts in American history, according to Neilsen. Last year’s game was watched by more than 123 million people — the second-biggest TV audience of all time, behind only the moon landing.
So it’s no surprise that brands are willing to fork over huge amounts of money for the chance to make their pitch to such a massive collection of potential customers. Some 30-second slots for this year’s Super Bowl have reportedly sold for a record $8 million, a full $1 million above the going rate a year ago.
Photo illustration: Oscar Duarte for Yahoo News; photos: Getty Images, Josh Edelson/AFP via Getty Images, Getty Images
Even in its relatively humble early days, the Super Bowl was a big deal. In 1967, more than 50 million people watched the first broadcast of what was then known as the AFL-NFL World Championship Game between competing broadcasts on CBS and NBC. While ratings for the big game have more than doubled over the past six decades, the going rate for commercials has increased at an exponential rate.
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According to the site superbowl-ads.com, a 30-second spot on CBS during the first Super Bowl cost just $42,500. One of the signature ads that year was a commercial for Goodyear Tires that centered around a woman stranded along the side of the road with no man in sight to rescue her. The tagline was, “When there’s no man around, Goodyear should be.”
Viewership for the Super Bowl gradually increased over the next few years, as did the prices networks charged for ad time. But the game truly established itself as “an event for advertisers” in 1973 thanks to a sultry commercial for Noxzema that featured actress Farrah Fawcett preening over New York Jets quarterback Joe Namath. By then, Super Bowl ads went for an average of $88,000.
Photo illustration: Oscar Duarte for Yahoo News; photos: Roberto Machado Noa/LightRocket via Getty Images, Justin Sullivan/Getty Images, Getty Images
Prices steadily climbed over the following decade. In 1980, the year Coca-Cola aired its iconic “Hey kid, catch” ad with Pittsburgh Steelers defensive tackle Joe Greene, a 30-second slot cost $222,000. During this period, advertisers were also becoming increasingly conscious of the importance of storytelling when it came to helping their brands stand out from the crowd of other advertisers.
The 1984 Super Bowl broadcast featured the debut of Apple’s famed ad inspired by George Orwell’s dystopian novel, which is still widely viewed as one of the most important commercials of all time.
By the time McDonald’s tapped NBA legends Michael Jordan and Larry Bird for their famous game of H-O-R-S-E in 1993, the going rate for Super Bowl ad slots had gone up to $850,000. Prices broke the million-dollar barrier for the first time two years later, the year Budweiser introduced the public to its trio of soft-spoken frogs. The beermaker’s next breakthrough ad, the notably less serene “Whassup?” spot, came in 2000, when ad slots had jumped to $1.6 million.
Photo illustration: Oscar Duarte for Yahoo News; photos: Yuriko Nakao/Getty Images, Neil Godwin/Future Publishing via Getty Images, Garrett Ellwood/NBAE via Getty Images
By the turn of the millennium, it became the norm for ad costs to leap by several hundred thousand dollars from year to year. In 2009, a 30-second spot was just a hair under $3 million. Just five years later, it was $4 million.
There have been occasional dips or brief moments of stagnation, but the trend of ever-increasing Super Bowl commercial prices shows no sign of slowing down, especially if ratings for the game continue to climb as they have over the past few years.
Super Bowl audiences have never been bigger, but brands may not be getting as much return on their ad spending as they used to back in the game’s early days. In terms of viewers per dollar spent, the most efficient era for Super Bowl commercials was all the way back in the late 1960s and early 1970s, when just $100,000 could buy access to an audience of 40 million viewers or more.
