Super Bowl ads: A Big Fat Waste?
Now I might not want to think about the Super Bowl, after my partner's team, the Philadelphia Eagles, lost narrowly to Bill Bellichick's New England Patriots last Sunday. Still, at least there's those fun ads, right? Well actually, I think even those are more boring than they used to be. But they are supposed to offer advertisers a lot of bang for their buck, right? Well, maybe not. Now Slate's Timothy Noah tells me that advertisers who ply their wares on the biggest media event of the year are wasting their money. Notes Noah:
- Late last month, Broadcasting & Cable reported on an interesting experiment. It asked an ad agency called Starcom to enter Nielsen ratings data from last year's Super Bowl time slot into a computer to see whether the computer could "beat" a Super Bowl ad buy. The average price of a Super Bowl ad last year was $2.30 million per 30-second spot. (The price this year climbed to $2.40 million per 30-second spot.) Starcom fed that into the computer, too. Then it set about trying to see whether, by "spending" the same amount on counter-programming that other networks and cable channels ran against the Super Bowl, the computer could exceed the Super Bowl's slice of the audience that advertisers care about: adults between the ages of 18 and 49.
It wasn't even close. The computer's Super Bowl ad buy reached 29 percent of adults 18-49; the computer's counter-programming ad buy reached 47.3 percent of adults 18-49. In essence, buying ad time on various TV shows that were supposedly going unwatched—because "everybody" was watching the Super Bowl—would have enabled advertisers to reach 60 percent more potential customers.
posted by hdougie at 2/09/2005 04:56:00 PM
4 Comments:
Still, the dancing bear kicking Burt Reynolds in the groin was pretty funny.
--lori
PS -- just wait till next year!
Fly Eagles Fly! E-A-G-L-E-S! EAGLES!
Ok, so I'm like writing this about seven months later, but I deffinately would love to comment on this. Every year its like a tradition to watch the super bowl, get lots of food and hang out with the family. So I decided that maybe one year I will take an interest in football. (After watching the game I had more of an interest in the commercials as well as the interesting little half time report.) Well I soon realized that people who watch the Super Bowl, deffinately enjoy watching commercials more than the game. I mean the game is like four hours long and more than half of that time is commercials. And whats even more appalling is that for a thirty second ad to be played during the superbowl it coasts 2.4 million per thirty second spot. Is that not ridiculous or not. I mean sure its great advertisement but think of all the other things people could do with that money, spend it on worthy causes, give to charaties... I mean it just makes me disgusted. I'm just waiting for this year for the advertisements to cost even more. There is no need for things to cost so much especially when the viewers usually go get more food, to the bathroom, or get another beer during the commercials so viewers don't even see some of the commercials. Its like advertising agencies prepare all year for this one single day and then when it finally comes, I'm sure things go wrong... so my question is, is it really worth 2.4 million dollars for a thirty second ad and does it really improve sames that much?
P.S. I do enjoy reading previous blogs more then new ones. It seems like the news today is all sad and not as interesting as the super bowl. So I'd love to see more football or sports comments!
Kateri Spellecy
I cannot help but be more interested in the commercials than the Super Bowl over the last several years because, sadly enough, I am a New York Jets fan. Although many of the commercials are hilarious, I tend to find very little variety in them. One year, most of the commercials were .com's, or like this past year (2006) many of the commercials were from only a few companies. It is horrible to see alcohol companies spend a ridiculous amount of money on several commercials. There are other great things that can be done with the money, like Kateri suggested, give some to charity. It is ridiculous how much money we are willing to spend on a 30 second commercial, most of which we will never see aired on tv again.
-Kaitlyn Collins
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