Jump Off Point for Super Bowl Ads? $3 Million Dollars

Emmett Jones | May 7, 2008 More

Do you have a hilarious or heart-warming commercial idea? Or do you feel the world needs to know about your great new product or company? Then you need yourself a Super Bowl ad! The Super Bowl is known for its wonderful commercials, and last year over 97 million viewers watched the Super Bowl on television. Can’t beat that, right?

Oh, did I mention it will cost at least $3 million dollars? From the Wall Street Journal,

NBC Universal, a unit of General Electric Co., plans to announce next week that $3 million will be the entry price for a commercial at the 2009 Super Bowl. While individual slots have sold at that level before, it’s never been the starting point for negotiations for the dozens of 30-second ads sold for the game. It represents a price increase of more than 10%, roughly double the usual annual rise.

$3 million as a jumping-off point. For the the 2008 Super Bowl, Fox charged $2.7 million per 30-second spot, and Super Bowl ads usually only increase $100,000 to $200,000 per year, so the increase isn’t that large, but more importantly can NBC pull it off? According to the WSJ article, several media buyers declined to comment on NBC’s announcement. The law of diminishing returns applies to everything, including the Super Bowl; at some point the cost for an ad won’t be worth the benefit received. Is $3 million dollars the ceiling? Probably not, but it will still be interesting to see what happens to Super Bowl ads as we approach next February’s Super Bowl.