Super Bowl Commercials 2020: Review of Ad Costs, Value Before 49ers vs. Chiefs

No single event in the United States attracts more eyeballs than the Super Bowl, and that yearly fact is recognized within the cost of advertising.

When the Kansas City Chiefs and San Francisco 49ers battle for NFL supremacy Sunday, companies will fight to become a memorable piece of the broadcast through commercials. The potential reward for a successful ad campaign is nothing short of enormous.

But that possibility comes at a price.

According to Eben Novy-Williams and Scott Soshnick of Bloomberg, a 30-second spot during Super Bowl LIV runs $5.6 million. This year, Fox sold 77 national spots.

Novy-Williams and Soshnick reported that every ad cost at least $5 million, "except for one company['s], whose long-standing bulk order kept its pricing under that threshold." Companies that bought multiple ad slots received a discount.

Per the report, total sales probably surpassed $400 million.

Kristina Monllos of Digiday provided a comparison of what $5.6 million could otherwise buy in digital media this year. The alternatives include, among others, between 46.6 and 70 million impressions on Hulu pause ads or 1.4 billion Twitter impressions.

Given that last season's Super Bowl attracted an average of 98.2 million viewers, the cost is unsurprising.

Brynn Anderson/Associated Press

While the game's ratings have dropped noticeably over the past half-decade, the Super Bowl remains the country's most watched event annually. Last year, for example, the No. 2 event—the AFC Championship Game—attracted an average of 53.9 million viewers.

Determining the value of a commercial's price, which doesn't include production of the ad, is a little more complicated.

"There's no silver bullet in marketing," said Pete Baka, president of 360 Marketing LLC, per Marc Bona of Cleveland.com. "Marketing is accomplished by death by a thousand cuts. Super Bowl advertising is a unique venue. Is it worth it for the number of eyeballs? Sure."

Eyeballs aren't the only thing that matters, though. Baka continued:

"But what the advertiser gets is all the other associated things around the Super Bowl. So they get social-media plays for their television commercial and they get the website presence of their commercial. They get local support for their product and services. So it's not just the game and event. It's all the things that lead up to it and all the things that happen before and after the Super Bowl."

That secondary value has only increased in the social-media age because commercials are shared and discussed. The challenge is creating a campaign worthy of that attention.

Let the best advertisement win.

Follow Bleacher Report writer David Kenyon on Twitter @Kenyon19_BR.