Super Bowl Commercial Facts

The Super Bowl generates large amounts of advertising revenue each year for the NFL and its broadcasting partners. The cost of a 30-second ad has increased significantly since the first Super Bowl, but ad segments continue to be sold out each year for the Super Bowl telecast.

  1. Price

    • In 1967 a 30-second Super Bowl ad cost $37,500. That Super Bowl was viewed by 24,430,000 people, which equates to a cost of a little more than a tenth of a cent per viewer. In 2008, a 30-second Super Bowl ad cost $2.7 million, and 97,448,000 tuned in for the game. That's about 2 1/2 cents per viewer.

    Cost Trends

    • The cost of a 30-second Super Bowl commercial increased from $37,500 in 1967 to $900,000 in 1994. That was an increase of 2,300 percent in those 27 years, an average of a little more than 80 percent per year. The cost for an ad in 2009 was $3 million, which represents an increase of 233 percent since 1994, an average of 15 percent per year.

    Ratings

    • The 1982 game between San Francisco and Cincinnati had the highest Super Bowl ratings of all time. The Neilsen rating was 49.1. The cost of a 30-second Super Bowl ad that year was $324,300.

    Dipping Costs

    • There have been three years when the cost to purchase a 30-second ad dropped from the previous year. The first year it happened was 1971, when the $78,500 cost was $6,000 less than in 1970. The most recent drop came in 2007, when the $2.4 million price tag was $100,000 less than in 2006.

    Shortest Commercial

    • The shortest-ever Super Bowl commercial ran in 2009. It lasted one second. Miller High Life purchased the commercial, which was so short that the beer company was not able to fit its entire name in the allotted time.