Super Bowl ad buyers blanch at $5M price
It’s only July, but top tier Super Bowl advertisers are reportedly pushing back on NBC’s plans to charge more than $5 million for a 30-second spot. But a local expert says the Super Bowl remains one of the few television events that is all but guaranteed to draw more than 100 million viewers.
“In the world we live in today, the Super Bowl still is a unique, one-of-a-kind opportunity for advertisers,” said Charles Coplin, a professor at Emerson College and a former vice president of programming for the NFL.
Variety reported yesterday that ad buyers are trying to keep prices for the live television event in check as NBC reportedly is asking for upwards of $5 million for a 30-second ad.
“We get concerned whenever we see prices going up,” Marcel Marcondes, chief marketing officer for Anheuser-Busch, told Variety.
Marcondes said viewers are frequently turning to mobile and streaming devices to watch sports, which should drive down the cost of advertising.
But Coplin, who launched the NFL Network and ran the Super Bowl halftime show for years, said the game is one of the few events that will bring in eyeballs across the country. Since 2014, the game has brought in an audience of about 110 million viewers each year, and it shows no signs of waning next year in Minneapolis.
“There’s been no change or tipping point that would give advertisers any group to walk on,” Coplin said. “It’s still a seller’s market when it comes to the Super Bowl, and that’s not true of anything else right now.”