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could make $ sense
Viewers will watch ads. May see the game too.
By Kevin Downey
Advertisers plunking down $2.1 million for a 30-second spot on this Sunday’s Super Bowl XXXVII may end up getting more than they bargained for, despite having paid roughly 10 percent more this year.
This is for two reasons.
Viewership should be way up for the game between the Oakland Raiders and Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
And their ads will get saturation eyeballing from the people they most desire.
A new study from Initiative Media confirms the longstanding Super Bowl truisim that it's the leading major event of the year when viewers pay close, and perhaps closer, attention to the commercials.
The Initiative study found that nearly 100 percent of adults 18-49 watching the Super Bowl hang around for the commercials.
“The highest-rated events do a better job of holding the audience,” says Stacey Lynn Koerner, senior vice president and director of broadcast research at Initiative.
“But after the top four or five, you see the range you would with regular programs.”
While the Super Bowl tops the list of programs that hold an audience, other programs that earn “event” status, like the season finales of “Friends” or “Survivor,” also do a good job of carrying their audience through commercial breaks.
Those two episodes, for example, had an audience retention of roughly 95 percent, compared to 85 to 95 percent for the average primetime program.
The Super Bowl, however, has one thing no other event program can deliver, an audience of well over 80 million people.
Last year’s game, perhaps hurt or helped some by the then-fresh events of 9/11, had an audience of 86.8 million people, according to Nielsen Media Research. That was 3 percent higher than the audience for the 2001 game and ranked as the seventh most-watched Super Bowl since 1990.
This year’s game is widely expected to pull bigger numbers.
With ratings up for regular and post-season football, the sport has the momentum to propel the Super Bowl past last year’s 40.4 household rating, which was flat to the previous year’s game.
“We’re going to see a bounce this year, which I would put in the 8 percent to 10 percent range,” says Don Hinchey, director of communications at the Bonham Group, a sports marketing firm.
“They have a cross-country match-up and there are a lot of storylines to spice up the pot.”
Among those storylines is a new rivalry between the two teams.
This is Tampa Bay’s first year with head coach Jon Gruden, who was lured from Oakland last year. His new and old teams face each other on Sunday.
“The other thing is that there is only a week between the [championship games and the Super Bowl],” says Hinchey.
“I think that will help. People are still pumped, so it will be an enhancer.”
The intensity of the game will ultimately determine how many people watch it, but the ratings trend gives advertisers something to be optimistic about.
ABC’s Monday Night Football’s average audience was up 4 percent this season.
Over the past weekend, the NFC championship game on Fox was up 5 percent over last year’s game, to a 23.8 household rating, while the AFC game on CBS was up 10 percent, to a 26.4 rating, based on preliminary data.
That ratings trend, along with a rebounding media economy, helped ABC secure an increase in ad rates for XXXVII.
ABC executives wouldn’t give specifics but a 30-second spot is reportedly going for between $2 and $2.2 million, up from last year’s roughly $1.9 million. All but a handful of spots are sold, which the network says will be gone by game day.
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Commercial Audience
Retention |
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Rank |
Special |
Adult 18-49 |
% Watch |
|
1 |
Super Bowl XXXVI |
34.7 |
99.4% |
|
2 |
Friends Season Finale |
17.1 |
96.6% |
|
3 |
Survivor: Africa Finale |
11.4 |
94.8% |
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4 |
ER Season Finale |
13.1 |
94.6% |
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5 |
CSI Season Finale |
9.7 |
94.5% |
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6 |
Academy Awards |
16.1 |
94.0% |
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7 |
Will & Grace Season Finale |
12.1 |
93.9% |
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8 |
Steven King’s Rose Red Part 1 |
9.7 |
93.7% |
|
9 |
The Bachelor 2 Finale |
12.0 |
93.0% |
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10 |
Survivor: Marquesas Finale |
10.4 |
92.7% |
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11 |
Steven King’s Rose Red Part 2 |
8.3 |
91.6% |
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12 |
Golden Globe Awards |
9.5 |
91.6% |
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13 |
World Series Game 7 |
11.1 |
90.4% |
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14 |
Grammy Awards |
9.0 |
89.9% |
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15 |
Survivor: Africa Reunion Show |
8.7 |
88.0% |
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Source: Initiative Media's IM Futures, based on data from Nielsen Media Research |
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January 22, 2003© 2003 Media Life
-Kevin Downey is a staff writer for Media Life
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