This year a single 30-second ad spot during the Super Bowl TV broadcast will cost a cool $4 million.
And that’s just for the placement alone — not the dollars that go into producing the ad.
The high cost of advertising is directly related to Super Bowl viewership, of course, which is predicted to be north of 100 million people this year.
Still, $4 million is a really hefty sum, even for major brand advertisers. Just how big is underscored in some comparative figures put together by Jack Marshall, a reporter at marketing e-zine Digiday.

In lieu of spending $4 million on a single ad spot, here’s how Marshall reported that the promotional money could be spent in alternative ways:
- 14 billion Facebook Ad Impressions – According to digital marketing software firm Kenshoo, right-hand column “marketplace” ads on Facebook averaged 27 cents per thousand impressions during 2013. This means that for $4 million, an advertiser could run a Facebook marketplace ad every second of every day for the next 469 years.
- 3 billion Banner Ad Impressions – In 2013, average online display ad CPMs were running just shy of $1.30, looking globally. Applying that figure to the U.S. market translates into 3 billion display ad impressions for your $4 million spend.
- 160 million Sponsored Content Views – The typical charge is ~$25 to distribute sponsored content to 1,000 readers. At that rate, $4 million would give you 160 million impressions (provided a publisher could actually deliver that many!).
- 10.8 million Paid Search Clicks – With an overall average cost-per-click of 37 cents in 2013, $4 million would cover just shy of 11 million clicks. That may be one-tenth the size of the Super Bowl viewing audience … but at least your audience would be actually searching for your product or service instead of heading to the kitchen for more corn chips and queso dip.
These are just some of the comparative figures outlined by Jack Marshall in his article. You can read the others here.