Sports TV
Your primer on Sunday's Super Bowl
By Toni Fitzgerald
Jan 27, 2009 - 1:25:05 AM

As the Super Bowl nears, two things hog the headlines each year at this time.

First, oddsmakers begin to lay down lines on who will win the actual game. This year, the Pittsburgh Steelers, aiming for a record sixth Super Bowl win, are favored by a touchdown over the Arizona Cardinals, who are making their first appearance in the game.

Second, Go Daddy usually complains loudly and longly over a provocative ad it has created for the big game that's been rejected. This year, however, NBC shocked the domain-name company by approving both its proposed ads weeks in advance.

The company had to abruptly change strategies and promote an online vote to decide which ad, both starring scantily clad women, will air in Sunday’s game.

That clears the way for media buyers to concentrate on the issue that really matters to them: how the game will perform as a vehicle for their clients' advertising.

So here’s a quick look at what media buyers need to know about the Super Bowl, which airs Sunday at 6 p.m. on NBC.

According to various reports, the average 30-second spot for the game is a record $3 million, or 11 percent more than last year’s $2.7 million on Fox.

But sales of the commercials reportedly have stalled since Labor Day, with only a handful of the 67 total spots moving since then. There are still nine left to sell, and some reports have NBC slashing rates by roughly $1 million to move the final units.

That underscores the dismal state of the media economy. Last year at this time, Fox had only one ad left to sell.

Some advertisers, including FedEx and General Motors, have pulled out of the game, fearing in part that spending scads of money on a one-off Super Bowl stunt will send the wrong message at a time when thousands are being laid off.

In fact, some advertisers are making their message more community-oriented to reflect sensitivity to the recession. Kellogg’s Frosted Flakes spot asks viewers to log on to its web site and nominate a kids’ play field to be rebuilt by the company for free.

Advertisers always pay a premium to have their ads run during the desirable first-half slots. That’s when viewers are still engaged, the game is usually still close, and the halftime beer run has not yet been made.

Still, the debate has raged for years over whether any Super Bowl ad buy is worth it. In 1999 and 2000, when venture capital money was flowing into the dot.coms, it became a trendy buy, with nearly $50 million spent over those two years by startup companies.

This year, it looks as though 3D will be the big trend. At least two advertisers, DreamWorks Animation and Pepsi’s Sobe, will air 3D ads, and NBC will heavily promote a 3D episode of “Chuck” slated to premiere the day after the game.

Movie studios generally will be heavy advertisers, with more than a half-dozen spots on tap for companies including Paramount, Universal and Sony. Last year movie studios were also big buyers, running 4.5 minutes of advertisements, and no wonder.  

Movies promoted during the Super Bowl generally achieve double the opening weekend and final box office numbers as non-Super Bowl advertised movies, according to ad buying agency Carat.

Meanwhile, at least three companies, Pedigree, Denny’s and Teleflora, are running their first-ever Super Bowl spots.

Longtime advertiser Anheuser-Busch will be the top individual advertiser for the ninth straight year, media buyers say, though last year the top ad category was actually automotive.

The Super Bowl audience is an attentive one. Carat says audience retention during Super Bowl commercials is a remarkable 99.2 percent, making it by far the top sports event of the year in terms of ad views.

Over the past few years, these ads have also taken on new life online after the game.

Dozens of sites now offer replays of the game’s ads. Last year Pepsi’s much-touted Justin Timberlake commercial drew an additional 1.3 million views on YouTube in the two days after the game, according to Nielsen, with Pepsi’s Naomi Campbell Sobe ad drawing 399,000 more views, ranking first and second overall.

There’s always much talk about Super Bowl viewership, which over the past five years has ranged from a record of 97.5 million last year to a low of 86.1 million in 2005, according to Nielsen.

Last year’s game featured a team from the country’s No. 2 market, the New York Giants, against one trying to become the first 19-0 squad in NFL history. Analysts don’t expect nearly as large an audience for this year’s contest, despite the fact that the Steelers are one of the country’s more popular teams.

The Cardinals are a smaller-market team and weren’t favored to advance past the first round of the playoffs, let alone to the big game. Most had figured the Giants, who tied for the NFL’s best regular-season record, would represent the NFC again, and thus the Cards’ improbable run has not generated much excitement.

But in these days of increasingly fractured TV viewing, even a Super Bowl featuring a dull matchup between small-market teams will still draw an incredibly large audience.

Last year’s game more than tripled the number of total viewers for the season finale of “American Idol.” More than half of the top 10 most-watched shows in history are Super Bowls, and the game has been the most-watched TV show of the season for 13 straight years.

For the past five years, overall female viewership for the game has risen, hitting 37.7 million women over the age of 18 last year. About 10.5 million of last year’s Super Bowl viewers were black, while 7.5 million were Hispanics.