What “Decline in Ads Sales”? Watch All the Super Bowl Spots Here
There was a lot of hoopla leading up to the Super Bowl, with speculation around whether or not the ads would sell out in these economic times.
Well, NBC reported on the eve of Sunday’s Super Bowl that it has sold the last two of the 69 advertising spots for the game, pushing total ad revenue for the event to a record $206 million. (Yes, a “record”)
The network said its total of $261 million in ad revenue for all of Super Bowl day also is a record (yes, you read it correctly: another record). The ads have sold for between $2.4 million and $3 million per 30-second slot this year.
Thirty-two advertisers in all showcased their products during Super Bowl coverage. And you can watch all the Super Bowl Spots here.
But wait! The intelligentsia of the Advertising world isn’t satisfied: “Things are even worse than we thought” writes Ad Age’s Bob Garfield.
Why (we, response marketers obsessed with business results and not “creative”) ask?
Here is why:
“Not because it’s pitiful that the down-and-out Ed McMahon and MC Hammer should humiliate themselves before 100 million appalled eyewitnesses. Not because in the Dustbowl Super Bowl poor NBC is reduced to accepting a schlocky direct-response spot thinly disguised as a winking spoof of schlocky direct-response spots. Not even because the economy is so bad that we’re panicked into trading our jewelry and bridgework for 17¢ on the dollar of gold value”
No, no, no.
According to Garfield, “The truly scary thing is that this skeazy exercise from Euro RSCG Edge and Arnold Worldwide will generate, by far, the biggest ROI of the Super Bowl. With the financial structures of advertising in a state of collapse, if creativity is so beside-the-point, then what is the point?”
What is the point of Advertising?! Good question, I am glad he asked.
