Jaw-dropping amount of money each Super Bowl ad slot costs
Topics: Sport, Super Bowl, Money, Film and TV
Emily Brown
Featured Image Credit: Gregory Shamus/Getty Images / Pop Corners
Topics: Sport, Super Bowl, Money, Film and TV
Each year the hype around the Super Bowl ads gets bigger - but how much does it cost to get your hands on one of the coveted ad slots?
The Super Bowl is now so close we can almost taste the chicken wings and dips, with all of the attention on the Kansas City Chiefs and the San Francisco 49ers as they prepare to face off in Las Vegas.
The game will kick off at 3:30pm PT on Sunday, 11 February, and while the hardcore football fans will be focused on the scoreboard and the plays, more casual viewers will be looking forward to the half-time show and the ads set to air throughout the day.
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The exact number of ads aired during the Super Bowl varies year by year, but recently there have been around 70 spaces up for grabs.
Last year, the game recorded an average audience of 115.1 million viewers - so if a company wants to advertise something, there's rarely a better time to do so.
With that in mind, those in charge of the TV advertising spaces are able to hike up the costs for companies hoping to feature in one of the prominent spots.
The game is set to air this year on CBS as well as streaming on Paramount+, and according to The Hollywood Reporter, ad slots had sold out on the network by November 2023.
The publisher reported that for just one 30-second long ad, companies would have to fork over $7 million. That's $233,333 per second - but with the schedule filled months ago, it's clear that companies are willing to pay.
Longer version of the ads often air on YouTube - a significantly cheaper platform - but Peter Koeppel, founder and president of marketing agency Koeppel Direct, explained in 2019 why companies are so happy to pay for the slots on TV.
"Even though a Super Bowl advertising campaign might not pay immediately in hard dollars and cents, if a business can afford to produce one of these stellar spots, they stand to earn new customers and build awareness on a scale unmatched by other outlets,” he said.
“Good or bad, though, impactful Super Bowl ads are the ones that are getting talked about. What a marketer can’t afford is an ad that completely fails to deliver.
"Because the Super Bowl is also sort of a Super Bowl of marketing, the competition is fierce – the commercials have to be memorable for them to pay off in the long run. An ad that doesn’t give viewers something, for better or worse, won’t be a profitable one."
With the game nearly upon us, it won't be long before we see which ads manage to take the world by storm. Here's hoping the cost will be worth it!