TV beats stream in Super Bowl ad$

The internet may be steadily transforming the TV business, but there is one day a year when viewers and advertisers still act like almost nothing has changed: Super Bowl Sunday.

Fox charged up to $5.6 million for 30 seconds of TV ad time during this year’s Super Bowl, and said it was sold out in late November.

It sought $300,000 to $400,000 for streaming-only ads during the game, which took slightly longer to sell out, according to people familiar with the matter. For example, sneaker brand Saucony bought its streamingonly Super Bowl ad in December.

Fox sold streaming-only ads that will appear on its own sites and apps, using time slots that go to local ads during the traditional TV broadcast.

The differences largely reflect how marketers expect audiences to watch when the San Francisco 49ers face the Kansas City Chiefs on Sunday.

In the past decade, Super Bowl viewership in the US on traditional TV has routinely surpassed 100 million viewers a minute.

But the number of those who watched it on a free live stream in the last two years was much lower, based on data released by recent game broadcasters CBS and Comcast’s NBC. Last year’s Super Bowl averaged 2.6 million live streaming viewers a minute, according to CBS.

That was an increase from more than 2 million streaming viewers a minute in 2018, the figure reported by NBC at the time, but still far below the traditional TV audience.

Fox has told advertisers that this year’s game will attract millions of live streamers, according to a person familiar with the matter. It will be available free on a number of sites and apps owned by the network, the National Football League and Verizon.