According to TNS Media Intelligence, advertising during the Super Bowl game has accounted for 717 minutes – almost 12 full hours – of commercial time over the past 20 years (1986-2005) with increased time dedicated to commercials over the years. Those 12 hours represent 227 different advertisers, more than 1,400 commercial announcements and translate into $1.59 billion of network advertising sales.

The top five Super Bowl advertisers of the past 20 years have spent nearly $559 million on advertising during the game, accounting for 35 percent of total advertising dollars spent in the game. Who are they? Anheuser Busch leads the pack as an advertiser in every Super Bowl game since 1986, followed by Pepsico, General Motors, Time Warner and Fedex Corp.

TOP 5 SUPER BOWL ADVERTISERS
1986-2005

Source: TNS Media Intelligence

The top five advertisers have all advertised on the Super Bowl for at least 10 years. “Despite the high cost of commercial time, Super Bowl advertisers tend to re-enlist the following year. Each year, about 60 percent of the network TV ad money invested in the game comes from incumbent marketers who ran commercials the prior year,” said Jon Swallen, senior vice president of research at TNS Media Intelligence.

Swallen added, “While that’s a very high retention rate, it’s actually lower than the comparable rate for two other showcase TV events. Over the past 10 years, the average dollar retention rate for the Academy Awards has been 78 percent and for the World Series it has been 67 percent.”

Could the high costs of advertising in the Super Bowl be the cause? The cost of an advertisement in the Super Bowl has more than quadrupled in the past 20 years, reaching $2.4 million in 2005 for a 30-second unit. For the 2006 game, ABC is reportedly fetching $2.5 to $2.6 million for each 30-second spot.

SUPERBOWL ADVERTISING RATES
1986 - 2005

Source: TNS Media Intelligence

Time Allocated to Advertising
In addition to soaring costs, the amount of time dedicated to advertisements during the game has also increased, up from just over 36 minutes in 1996 to a record amount of over 43 minutes of ads during the 2005 FOX telecast. This includes paying sponsors plus “house ads” aired by FOX to promote its own programming.

Top Advertising Category – Not What You May Think!
The popular perception of the most frequently advertised products during the Super Bowl are beer, soft drinks and automobiles, given their annual presence in the game. But actually, the perennial leader is promotions from the host network itself. In a typical Super Bowl, one-fourth of all commercial time is a plug by the network for its own programming. The value of that air time exceeds $46 million.

Network Promotions In The Super Bowl

Source: TNS Media Intelligence

Advertisements that appear during Super Bowl XL will be available for viewing on the TNS Media Intelligence Web site (www.tns-mi.com) at 4pm ET on Monday, Feb. 6.

How Big Is the Super Bowl?
A comparison of advertising revenue from the Super Bowl and two other high-profile sporting events, Major League Baseball’s World Series and the NCAA Men’s Basketball Championship (March Madness), yields some interesting results.

The World Series is four to seven games. March Madness peaks with the semi-finals and a championship on its final weekend, a total of three games. The Super Bowl, of course, is a single telecast. Yet, it pulls in more network TV ad dollars than each of the other multi-game events.

Major Sporting Championships
Network TV Ad Revenue ($ millions)

Source: TNS Media Intelligence

About TNS Media Intelligence
TNS Media Intelligence is the leading provider of strategic advertising intelligence to advertising agencies, advertisers, and media properties. The company's tracking technologies collect advertising expenditure and occurrence data, as well as select creative executions, for more than 2.2 million brands across 20 media. Established in 23 countries with more than 16,000 customers, TNS MI is part of the TNS Group, ranked #2 worldwide in marketing information and the world’s largest custom research company. The U.S. headquarters are in New York City with sales locations in major markets throughout the United States.

About TNS
TNS is a market information group. We are the world’s largest custom research company and a leading provider of social and political polling. We are also a major supplier of consumer panel, TV audience measurement and media intelligence services.

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