How did Super Bowl commercials become such a big deal?
Today, over 100 million people tuned in to watch the New England Patriots take on the Los Angeles Rams in Super Bowl LIII. Or, did they just tune in to watch the commercials and halftime show? The cost of a single 30-second Super Bowl ad spot in 2019 was $5.25 million which comes out to $175,000 per second. In a recent survey of Millennials and GenZers, ~30% said they only watch for the ads. How did these commercials become such a cultural phenomenon and how did they get so expensive?
The first “Super Bowl” was held on January 15, 1967 and was originally called the AFL-NFL World Championship to represent the championship game played between the top team from the National Football League (NFL) and the American Football League (AFL) following the merger of the two associations which became finalized in 1970. Lamar Hunt, owner of the Kansas City Chiefs (part of the AFL) used the term “Super Bowl” in merger meetings and said that it was likely due to the fact that his kids had been playing with super ball toys.
The Green Bay Packers and the Kansas City Chiefs played at the LA Memorial Coliseum to a staggering tuned-in audience of 51 million people. The cost of a 30-second ad was just shy of $40,000 and it was the only Super Bowl to be simulcast by two networks since NBC had the rights to AFL games and CBS had the rights to NFL games. The first halftime show featured marching bands from the University of Arizona and Grambling State university — a far cry from the extravagant halftime shows of today.
The largest increase in ad prices happened in 2000, also named the “dot-com Super Bowl” since over 20% of the ads that year came from dot-com companies like pets.com, monster.com, hotjobs.com and many more. The ads jumped to $2.2 million for a 30-second ad spot which was 5500% more than ads 30 years prior, which is insane given that the viewership was only 88M or 172% what it was in 1967. Unfortunately, this was right at the beginning of the dot-com bubble burst and all of the companies that advertised saw their stocks go down and not up after the ads aired.
During most years, the Super Bowl is the most watched American television broadcast of the year and more eyeballs means more value to advertisers. The first semi-viral ad was during the Super Bowl of 1973 for Noxzema shave cream featuring football player Joe Namath and actress Farrah Faucett. The ad was created by the real life guys behind the hit show Mad Men and featured Joe saying “I’m so excited, I’m gonna get creamed” which was just the right mix of football jargon, sexual innuendo, and celebrity appeal to spark virality. After the Noxzema commercial, many brands caught on to the appeal of celebrity endorsements which has continued to this day.
In 1984, Apple created an ad for their new Macintosh computer, inspired by the dystopian George Orwell novel 1984, that went on to be another smash hit. In the ad a woman in a track suit runs into an auditorium and throws a hammer at a screen where a Big Brother type character is speaking to an audience of drone-like people. A message then comes onto the screen showing “On January 24, Apple Computer will introduce the Macintosh. And you’ll see why 1984 won’t be like ‘1984.’”
For the last 20 or so years, ads have been primarily dominated by beer and snack food companies like Budweiser (Anhauser-Busch), MillerCoors, Pepsi, Coca-cola, Doritos, etc likely due to the fact that Super Bowl Sunday is the second-largest day for U.S. food consumption, losing only to Thanksgiving. You always get a few oddballs like Expensify, and lots of commercials for cars… because murica.
