Superbowl Advertising

Broadcast vs. Narrowcast

The High Point of Broadcast Advertising - The SUPERBOWL!

The Superbowl has been the most watched American Television broadcast each year.

In 2011, it was the most watched show of all time, with 111 million viewers.

The Super Bowl is also among the most watched sporting events in the world, mostly due to its North American audiences, and is second to the UEFA Champions League final as the most watched annual sporting event worldwide.

As a result of being one of the few annual events to achieve such wide viewership, many high-profile television commercials are broadcast during the game, often coming from major brands (such as Budweiser, who annually airs spots during the Super Bowl; with notable campaigns such as the Bud Bowl and the Clydesdales), and smaller or lesser-known brands seeking the exposure that can be obtained through Super Bowl advertising.

However, this amount of prominence has also carried a high price: at Super Bowl XLVII in 2013, the average cost of a 30-second advertisement was around $4 million.

Super Bowl advertisements have also become a cultural phenomenon of their own; many viewers only watch the game to see the commercials, while national surveys (such as the USA Today Super Bowl Ad Meter) judge which advertisement carried the best viewer response.

Benefits

Due to the critical mass of viewers who view the game yearly (covering numerous demographics and age groups), airing a commercial during the Super Bowl can prove to be valuable for advertisers seeking an audience for their products and services.

As such, the network who broadcasts the Super Bowl can also charge a premium on the advertising during the game, to the point where marketers have raised concerns that Super Bowl advertising has become so expensive that the sales the advertising produces do not pay for the cost of buying ad time: some major Super Bowl advertisers, such as General Motors and Dr. Pepper, have dropped Super Bowl advertising entirely due to its increasing cost.^[3]

Early Advertisments

Several notable commercials aired during Super Bowl games during the 1970's. In 1973, Master Lock first ran an advertisement demonstrating the strength of its locks, by having a person shoot it with a gun in a failed attempt to breach it. The advertisement proved popular, and Master Lock would run other versions of the ad yearly during later editions of the Super Bowl throughout the 70's and 80's..^[9] In 1977, Xerox aired a Super Bowl advertisement entitled "Monks"; starring Jack Eagle as a monk named Brother Dominic discovering that he could create copies of a manuscript using a new Xerox photocopier.

Perhaps the most famous Superbowl ads of all time is the Apple Ad from 1983:

Controversy:

A number of Super Bowl ads have been blocked by networks' Standards and Practices departments (or became controversial themselves) due to concerns surrounding their content. Political advertising and most direct forms of issue-related advertising are usually not aired during the Super Bowl due to equal-time rules or other factors

This Year's Most Notable Commercials: