The Power of SuperBowl Ads
SuperBowl is the National Football League final match in the US. It is applauded not only for the final game but also for its remarkable SuperBowl ads that are broadcasted on the TV. The SuperBowl championship game constantly have very high rankings in the Nielsen ratings. The match is often watched by more than 90 million viewers. That’s the main reason why prices of a commercial space can ammount to millions of dollars. Like for example a 30 seconds of advertising space cost $2.6 M during the last 2010 telecast.
Due to the expensive advertising space, ad agencies see to it that they bring awesome and innovative ads. The SuperBowl ads are always looked forward by audience and create a lot of buzz. It is said that these commercials are as famous as the actual final game itself.
However, these days there has been plenty of concerns about the broadcasting of commercials because of the use of products like TiVo. TiVo let viewers to skip out the commercials. Moreover, advertisers are concerned that the SuperBowl advertising space are very costly even though surveys show that it does not provide positive changes on the advertiser’s market share.
Like what I’ve said above, the average cost of a 30 second advertising space in SuperBowl 2010 cost $2.6 M. This does not contain the fees for the endorsers, ad agencies, directors, equipment and personnel making it very expensive for the advertisers.
In Canada, there are some complaints on the unavailability of the U.S. SuperBowl ads. Rather than broadcasting the SuperBowl ads, American network affiliates blacked them out in favor of domestic commercials. This is acceptable because according to the Canadian simultaneous substitution regulations that if a local television network is broadcasting a particular program at the same time as an American network, the local network has the right to change the foreign network feed and commercials.
To solve this problem, some U.S.-based advertisers like Pepsi and Anheuser-Busch acquire advertising spots during the CTV (the network the carries the Canadian television rights of SuperBowl) broadcast to showcase at least some of their American commercials. However, there are some companies that create new commercials specific for their Canadian viewers.
