Are car and beer ads lost amidst network promotion during the Super Bowl?

Editor's note: This article appeared in the January 25, 2010, edition of Quirk's e-newsletter.

While the popular perception is that beer, soft drinks and autos are the prime Super Bowl ad categories, given their annual presence in the big game, the actual leader by dollar value is promotional advertising from the network itself, according to data from TNS Media Intelligence, a New York research company. In a typical Super Bowl, 15-20 percent of all commercial time is a plug by the network for its own programming. In 2009, the value of this air time exceeded $42 million; the NBC telecast of the 2009 Super Bowl contained a record 45 minutes, 5 seconds of network ads. This included paying sponsors, commercial messages from the NFL, plus house ads aired to promote network shows.

Over the past 10 years, with network ads increasingly eating up ad spots, the volume of commercial time during the Super Bowl has been edging upwards even as the price of advertising has become more expensive. At nearly $3 million for a 30-second ad spot during Super Bowl XLIV (more than quadruple what it was 20 years ago) it's no wonder that participating (and potential) advertisers question whether spending marketing dollars on the big game is a smart investment or a waste of precious dollars when they're competing with more ads than ever.

So do the major players in Super Bowl advertising find spending upwards of a third of their total advertising revenue on a single telecast too extravagant? Perhaps so. Of the top five advertisers from 1990-2009 - Anheuser-Busch, PepsiCo, General Motors (GM), Walt Disney and Time Warner, respectively - two will be sitting this year's game out: Pepsi and GM. Although Pepsi soft drinks will not be advertised in this year's game, ending a 23-year streak, the PepsiCo parent company will still be represented by its Frito-Lay snack food division. General Motors will be absent from the game for the second year in a row. Prior to dropping out in 2009, GM had advertised in 11 of the previous 12 Super Bowls.

Despite a few of the regulars pulling back, the Super Bowl is still one of the most-watched programs of the year, and first-timers are chomping at the bit to fill the vacancies. First-time advertisers account for 20-25 percent of the ad roster; 2009 newbies included Cash4Gold.com, Castrol, Denny's, Teleflora and Vizio. For the 2010 game, the rookie lineup is expected to include Electronic Arts and HomeAway, among others.