What did a Super Bowl ad cost in 2013? Around $3.7 to $3.8 million for 30 seconds during Super Bowl XLVII, about $4 million in round numbers. It is the most expensive half-minute in advertising, and advertisers still queue for it.
What the money buys
The Super Bowl reaches more than 100 million viewers, mostly in North America. At that audience a $4 million spot works out to a CPM of roughly $35 to $40: expensive compared with a $2.66 web banner or Nielsen's average TV CPM of about $25, but cheap for something no other single broadcast can deliver. The spot is also seen live, rarely skipped, and becomes part of the media conversation for days afterwards.
Being a big advertiser means you gamble your money on 30 seconds. For the largest brands the price is less dramatic than it sounds: some earn as much in profit in an hour as the spot costs.
Update: the betting brands arrive
Since we first wrote this post, prices have roughly doubled, with 30-second spots selling for around $7 million and more in the mid-2020s. The bigger change is who is buying. After the US Supreme Court struck down the federal ban on sports betting in 2018, legal sportsbooks spread across the states and became some of the NFL's biggest advertising partners. Betting brands now buy Super Bowl airtime, sponsor pre-game shows and flood digital channels in the week before the game, while the American Gaming Association estimates that tens of millions of Americans bet on it.
For publishers this means the weeks around big sporting finals are the best-paying of the year for sports and betting content. Read sports betting advertising around big events for how to prepare.
