What is a Super Bowl Commercial?

Super Bowl is the National Football League (NFL) championship match in America. It is well-known not only for the final game but also for its notable commercials that are aired on the TV. The broadcast often have very high rankings in the Nielsen ratings. The final game broadcasted to more than 90 million spectators. That's the number one reason why the cost for an commercial spot can cost millions of dollars. For example a 30 seconds of a Super Bowl commercial spot cost $2.6 M during the last 2010 telecast.

Due to the expensive commercial spot, advertisers see to it that they give notable and cutting edge commercials. The Super Bowl commercials are always anticipated by viewers and create a lot of reaction. It is said that these commercials are as highly-anticipated as the actual championship game itself.

However, nowadays there has been plenty of concerns about the airing of commercials because of the use of products like TiVo. TiVo allows viewers to skip out the commercials. In addition, marketers are concerned that the Super Bowl commercial spot became really expensive although some studies show that it does not result to a favorable changes on the advertiser's share of the market.

Like what I've mentioned above, the average price tag of a 30 second commercial spot in Super Bowl 2010 cost $2.6 M. This does not contain the fees for the actors, ad agencies, directors, equipment and personnel making it highly expensive for the advertisers.

In Canada, there are several negative reactions on the unavailability of the U.S. Super Bowl commercials. Instead of showing the Super Bowl commercials, local television network substitute them with domestic commercials. This is possible because under the Canadian simultaneous substitution regulations that if a local television network is broadcasting a particular program at the same time as an American network, the local network has the right to displace the foreign network feed and commercials.

To remedy this problem, some U.S.-based advertisers like Pepsi and Anheuser-Busch purchase commercial spots during the CTV (the TV networl the holds the Canadian television rights of Super Bowl) broadcast to showcase at least some of their American commercials. However, there are some companies that create new commercials specific for their Canadian viewers.