Super Bowl advertising

The Super Bowl, the championship game of the National Football League in the United States, is known for the high-profile advertisements that air during its television broadcast in the U.S. The broadcast typically ranks very highly in the Nielsen ratings, reaching more than 90 million viewers. Prices for advertising space can typically cost millions of dollars.[1]

The high price tag of the commercials, and the ubiquity of the event in which they air, all but promises that they will be spectacular and innovative in most cases. The commercials are often highly anticipated, generating much buzz even before the game is played usually because of their innovation or sense of humor.

Contents

History

Network television has been, since its beginning, funded almost entirely by advertising (retransmission consent fees were not allowed under federal law until 1994). The debut of home video in the 1980s allowed viewers to record programming and either edit commercials out while recording or fast-forward through the commercials without viewing them. Early home video was cassette-based, a bulky and slow medium that was well suited for films, but little else; the introduction of digital video recorders in the early 2000s made the concept viable for most other television events as well. Through the process of time shifting, a viewer could watch one program while recording another, then watch the recorded program and skip over the commercials. While this is an issue with most scripted programming, which can be recorded and replayed at will, the Super Bowl is a live event that loses its value if delayed, and one cannot fast-forward into the future.

The National Football League had been a major television event ever since the 1958 NFL Championship Game. The success of the American Football League and its rivalry and eventual merger with the NFL generated significant publicity for what was originally known as the "World Championship Game;" the game became known colloquially as the Supergame prior to the first installment[2] a term that eventually evolved into the "Super Bowl." This publicity helped cement the Super Bowl as an annual television event; the loosening of blackout restrictions in the host team's market in 1972 made the game available nationwide. As television audiences continued to fracture with the increasing number of subscription television channels, by the 1990s the Super Bowl was one of the few events on broadcast television that could consistently draw a critical mass of viewers (and thus potential customers), a distinction that remains to this day. (The Super Bowl has never been awarded to a cable channel in its history, and current contracts would not allow such until Super Bowl LVIII in 2024 at the earliest.) As such, the network that owns the right to the Super Bowl can 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 it does not positively impact an advertiser's market share. Super Bowl XLVI, broadcast on NBC, set a record for the price of a Super Bowl advertisement, selling 58 spots (including those longer than 30 seconds) during the game generating US $75 million for the network; the most expensive advertisement sold for $4 million.[3]

Many times companies will go through a phase of pre-event advertising in order to hype up their own ad campaigns. In doing so some companies can create an anticipation for their commercials that is almost the same as the actual event itself.[4]

Because of the large audiences watching the broadcast, the networks have stringent Standards and Practices regarding what content is allowed on a Super Bowl commercial. As always, networks have the right to reject or request a modification to any commercial. All forms of political advertising and most direct forms of issue-related advertising are banned, due to equal-time rules.[5] Profanity of all kinds is also generally prohibited, as is content that is either sexually explicit or encourages sexually immoral behavior (for instance, Avid Life Media, owner of the unorthodox dating services Ashley Madison and ManCrunch, has been rejected on a nearly annual basis in its bids to buy air time during the event). In certain situations, these restrictions can be circumvented by directing viewers to a Web site, where uncensored content can be aired, a strategy used frequently by the Internet domain provider GoDaddy.

International broadcasts

The high-profile Super Bowl ads discussed in this article are usually only broadcast on the originating American network. This is because the cost of buying commercial time on the American network does not include ad time on foreign broadcasters, which sell their own advertising (or, in some cases, do not carry advertising at all). Those companies could theoretically buy commercial time on the international networks carrying the game, but many do not operate (or sell the particular products advertised) outside the United States. Moreover, since there is lower interest in American football outside the U.S., other carriers have smaller audiences for the game, meaning that the ads seen locally may not share the high reputation of those seen on the American network.

Canada

Complaints about the non-availability of the U.S. Super Bowl ads are common in Canada[6][7] since, even though American network affiliates are widely available via cable and satellite television, the U.S. ads are still "blacked out" in most areas in favor of domestic commercials. Under Canadian simultaneous substitution regulations set out by the CRTC, if a local over-the-air television station is carrying a particular program at the same time as an American network, the local station has the right to request that its signal replace the foreign network feed, including all commercials. CTV, the terrestrial broadcaster that holds the rights to the Super Bowl, has the right to invoke simultaneous substitution (to date, CTV and all networks that have held rights to the Super Bowl have invoked simultaneous substitution over every Super Bowl), blacking out all U.S. commercials on cable and satellite.

Some U.S.-based advertisers, particularly PepsiCo and Anheuser-Busch (via its Canadian licensee Labatt), do buy ad time during the CTV broadcast to air at least some of their American commercials, while some companies produce new ads specifically for the Canadian audience. However, many Canadian advertisers simply re-air ads from their regular rotation, or air the same ad multiple times over the course of the game, neither of which is typical during the U.S. network broadcast.

Some Canadian stations, after airing the Super Bowl, choose to air the U.S. commercials during their local newscasts, to show their audiences what they presumably missed.

Notable commercials

See also

References

  1. ^ CBS looking for $200 million for a 30-second Super Bowl ad – Jan. 3, 2007
  2. ^ "Video". CNN. September 12, 1966. http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1078994/index.htm. Retrieved May 24, 2010. 
  3. ^ Sherman, Alex (January 3, 2012) page 13. NBC Gets $80 Million for Super Bowl Ads, Sells Out Inventory. Bloomberg LP. Retrieved January 3, 2012.
  4. ^ McAllister, Matthew. "Super Bowl Advertising as Comercial Celebration". http://php.scripts.psu.edu/users/m/p/mpm15/SuperBowl.pdf. Retrieved 23 September 2011. 
  5. ^ Teinowitz, Ira. Fox Won't Sell Super Bowl Ads to Candidates. TV Week. January 24, 2008.
  6. ^ Flavelle, Dana (2010-02-01). "Demand for Super Bowl ads spikes in Canada". Toronto Star. http://www.thestar.com/business/companies/article/931746--demand-for-super-bowl-ads-spikes-in-canada. Retrieved 2010-02-05. 
  7. ^ Kelly, Brendan (2010-02-04). "Funny U.S. ads turfed on CTV's Super Bowl simulcast: HD broadcast overrides Fox's on cable, replacing U.S. commercials with Canadian". The Gazette (Montreal). http://www.montrealgazette.com/business/turfed+from+simulcast/4222338/story.html. Retrieved 2010-02-05. 
  8. ^ ESPN.com - Page2 - Best Super Bowl commercials
  9. ^ Coca-Cola Television Advertisements:The D'Arcy Era
  10. ^ http://www.snopes.com/rumors/tributes/budweiser.asp
  11. ^ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2d17gXJp5v8
  12. ^ http://www.radaronline.com/sites/default/files/cbs1.pdf
  13. ^ By Roland S. Martin, CNN Political Analyst (2010-02-08). "Nothing wrong with Tebow Super Bowl ad". CNN.com. http://www.cnn.com/2010/OPINION/02/06/martin.tebow.superbowl.ad/. Retrieved 2010-05-24. 
  14. ^ "Tebow and controversy, Super Bowl-style | CollegeFootballTalk.com". Collegefootballtalk.nbcsports.com. 2010-01-16. http://collegefootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2010/01/16/tebow-and-controversy-super-bowl-style/. Retrieved 2010-05-24. 
  15. ^ Laud the courage in Tim Tebow's stand
  16. ^ More than 50,000 show support for Tebow pro-life Super Bowl ad
  17. ^ http://superbowlcommercial.co/