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A cat meowing for Hellmann’s mayonnaise, Peyton Manning throwing Bud Light beers at customers at a bar, and Kris Jenner stacking Oreo cookies. They all have one thing in common: Those companies paid seven figures to introduce their products to viewers during this year’s Super Bowl.
For the second year in a row, the average cost of a 30-second ad during the Super Bowl was $7 million. Although many companies are being more disciplined with their marketing dollars and advertising spending has slowed in recent years, the cost of a Super Bowl ad continues to rise.
The reason is simple: There is no guaranteed opportunity to reach more people than the Super Bowl, and the slice of the pie continues to shrink.
“It’s a setback in terms of reaching everyone at once,” said Charles Taylor, a marketing professor at the Villanova School of Business.
In an increasingly fragmented media landscape, the number of opportunities for companies to reach a mass audience through advertising on television networks has decreased. Popular shows have increasingly moved to streaming platforms, along with audiences. Increasingly, networks are relying on live events, such as awards shows and sports, to attract viewers.
“Live events are still huge for advertisers, and those are the ones that get the most attention,” said Frank Maguire, vice president of Sharethrough, an advertising integration platform.
However, not all live events are created equal. A record audience watched the Emmy Awards in January. Leagues such as the National Basketball Association and the National Hockey League have struggled to retain and grow audiences, and ratings for the NCAA men’s basketball finals have fallen in recent years.
But the National Football League has continued its strong upward march, both in terms of viewership and media deals. In 2021, television networks committed $110 billion to the league’s broadcast rights over a decade, and the NFL has continued to set record viewership numbers. More than 115 million people watched last year’s championship game.
The Super Bowl itself is a massive television marketing opportunity. A decade ago, the average cost of a 30-second ad was $4 million; a decade earlier, it was $2.4 million. Analysts say the increase is a result of supply and demand: With a fixed amount of time and ads for each Super Bowl broadcast, competition is fierce. CBS, which will air Sunday’s game, sold out of its advertising spots in a matter of weeks in November. Paramount, owner of CBS, supposedly runs almost a dozen ads to promote their films.
“In this era of fragmentation, the Super Bowl is what television used to be,” said Brad Adgate, a veteran media analyst.
For many years, Super Bowl ads were closely guarded until game day. Companies now employ marketing campaigns that typically begin in mid-January.
“It’s about building a long-term narrative,” said Kofi Amoo-Gottfried, chief marketing officer at DoorDash, whose Super Bowl ad this year is driving a promotional deal.
Many viewers now watch the Super Bowl broadcast with an idea of what to expect from the ads. A January trailer for a Pringles ad, for example, featured an unknown man’s mustache, leading many fans to guess that he belonged to Kansas City Chiefs star Travis Kelce. (In fact, he belonged to actor Chris Pratt.)
“You’re not just paying for that 30-second ad; what you’re creating is a four- to six-week buzz,” said Mary Scott, a professor of strategic communications at Montclair State University and former president of United Entertainment Group, a sports and entertainment marketing agency.
The increase in female viewership for NFL games this season, made even more prominent by Taylor Swift’s relationship with Kelce, is another potential marketing opportunity for companies.
The news that Kansas City made it to the Super Bowl was welcomed by health and beauty companies, which disproportionately target young women. That demographic has tuned into more football games this season, thanks in large part to Swift’s appearances at Kansas City games.
NYX Makeup, a subsidiary of L’Oreal, purchased its first Super Bowl ad, while Dove returns with an ad for the first time since 2015. ELF Cosmetics is advertising for the second year in a row.
Kory Marchisotto, ELF’s marketing director, acknowledged that Kansas City playing in the Super Bowl was good for business. Marchisotto said his company ran different versions of ads in the days leading up to the game, a change from the way Super Bowl ads used to be prepared. Companies want to be as agile as possible and respond to the specific interests of the audience watching the game.
“It was a lot easier when you created an ad, spent a year on it, launched it into the market and sat back and let it fly,” he said.
At the same time, companies are investing more to ensure they get the most out of their $7 million. More ads this year are expected to include interactive components like QR codes, which help companies track engagement with their brands in real time.
The technology debuted at the 2022 Super Bowl with a floating code for Coinbase, a cryptocurrency company. The concept was used in more ads in last year’s Super Bowl, including one for avocados from Mexico and another for a public service announcement from a religious organization. The strategy also featured prominently during the NFL’s first Black Friday broadcast in November.
Taken together, the Super Bowl ads are an annual snapshot of the country’s economic and social momentum, said Ethan Heftman, vice president of agency sales at Ampersand, an advertising consortium owned by Comcast, Charter and Cox.
“As long as there are new industries (automotive, cell phone, technology companies),” Heftman said, “there will always be brands that seek that broad awareness.”