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The ins-and-outs of Super Bowl advertising: What’s in it for Colorado TV stations?

By Dennis Huspeni February 13, 2022 | updated 3 years ago

It’s not exactly a news flash that businesses pay big bucks to get their names in front of the nation’s largest TV audience.

“It’s hard to get 95 million people looking at the television all at once,” said Darrin Duber-Smith, a senior lecturer at Metropolitan State University of Denver. Duber-Smith has been teaching the subject for decades, and specializes in issues around Super Bowl advertising.

A 30-second network (this year’s game will be broadcast on NBC) spot during this year’s Super Bowl goes for $7 million, up 27% from last year and more than triple what a commercial went for 20 years ago.

Love them or loathe them: Metro Denver’s pitch people

People often wonder how much the local affiliates get out of that large pot of money. The answer: Not much, according to a local station official.

“The network probably keeps about 85% of all the ads that are sold, they’re network ads,” said a high-rankings station official who could not comment publicly about proprietary information. “During the game itself, there’s about 100 commercials, of which the affiliates get about 14 for local spots. We don’t get a ton of inventory to sell.”

Of course there’s different tiers of advertising levels on the expense chart. First half ads go for premium prices, while second-half prices decline because of the heavy possibility of loss of viewership if the game isn’t close. There’s also hours of pre-game programming, and the hour after the game for the Lobardi trophy presentation.

“The second half is way less expensive” than $7 million, Duber-Smith said.

In the Colorado Springs market, which includes Pueblo, for example KOAA-TV reportedly is charging more than $10,000 for its inventory of spots. The Denver station official said those couple of spots will sell for 100 times the normal price of a prime-time ad.

He added companies willing to spend that much know full well how to best utilize that uber-prime time real estate.

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“You’re not going to get any bang for your buck unless you leverage that with a lot more money spent on additional advertising and other promotional activities before and after the game,” said Duber-Smith. “Otherwise you’re wasting your money. It’s a terrible place for new products to introduce themselves.”

He also said it’s a bad place for a “target market” ad.

“It’s really a better place for a mass marketing pitch, a brand you’re already aware of,” he said.

The additional marketing support comes from social media campaigns, and teaser commercials for what’s coming during the game – much like the Amazon “Alexa” mind-reading ads we’ve been getting teased for weeks about featuring actors Scarlet Johansen and Colin Jost.

And though those pesky sports betting apps seem everywhere, a little known fact is that the network and the NFL agreed to limit the number actual sports betting app commercials during the game to three, the network official said.

“But you can’t get out of the way of those ads during pre-game and post-game shows,” he said.

“It reminds me of when the fantasy football apps were popular, and everything was sponsored by Draft Kings. It was all dominated by a handful of companies,” said Duber-Smith. “Those morphed into the gambling apps.”

The ads – a currently a money-making bonanza for Colorado affiliates much like political advertising in election season – should abate soon as other states approve legal sports betting, the network official said.

Gazette reporter Wayne Heilman contributed to this story.

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