The golden Super Bowl dust has settled.
And while touchdowns, Taylor, and Usher taking everyone on a trip down the millennial memory lane were trending—hundreds of millions of ad dollars were flying.
So we’ve decided to ignore the sports and pop culture and focus on what marketers love the most. Marketing, of course.
Let’s dive into rising and falling marketing trends during the big event.
🖱️📈 Clicking on each individual chart will take you to its interactive board.
How much did Super Bowl ads cost in 2024?
A measly $7 million for a 30-second advertisement.
However, the price hasn’t changed compared to last year. That might indicate that the global advertising trend of flatlining ad costs hit Super Bowl as well.
Here’s how it looks like mapped out:
As you see, the price per 30 seconds steadily increased every year.
The only exception being 2021 where it went slightly down, with Covid prevention protocols significantly reducing attendance—and therefore “killing” the buzz prior to the game.
That year notwithstanding, this is the first time Super Bowl ad costs haven’t increased in a long, long time.
🏈 Super Bowl total ad spend this year was estimated at $650M. So despite price staying the same, Paramount netted $50M compared to last year.
Who’s watching? Super Bowl 2024 viewer trends
A lot of people tuned in to watch this year.
In fact, this was the second most watched Super Bowl after 2017, with an estimated 123M people watching.
The popularity surrounding Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce might’ve boosted the viewership among younger and female audience, as well as Paramount selling “alternate Super Bowl” broadcasts, such as the SpongeBob Super Bowl coverage on Nickelodeon.
Oh, and about the broadcast… Viewers still prefer to watch the big game on linear TV.
But you can see other streaming services and YouTube TV continuing to bite into the traditional ways:
In 2022, the streaming viewership was just 10% of the total share. That’s a big jump.
Honest question. Would you be surprised if the share of users watching the Super Bowl on linear TV falls below 50% next year? We sure wouldn’t.
In fact, Nielsen reported that only 29% of users aged 18-34 watched SuperBowl via traditional channels. The same percentage already switched to smart TV and internet-connected devices.
The sample tells us that streaming and internet-connected devices keep rising with even sports content slowly moving to these channels.
And CTV ads are looking like they’re about to go bang.
The Best and Worst Super Bowl 2024 Ads
We’ve saved the best for last.
Companies didn’t only spend big to get in front of the Super Bowl audience.
They also spent on the highest-profile agencies and celebrities like Jennifer Aniston and Lionel Messi to star in their ads and stand out in front of two million eyeballs.
And according to the ratings, here’s how they fared rated from 1 to 10:
Yep, there was no need to extend this chart beyond 7 as no ad got rated that highly.
But here’s something interesting. Notice TurboTax’s low rating? It turns out it didn’t impact their traffic spike at all.
Cloudflare reports that TuroTax’s ad that aired at 19:56—and contained an URL to their website—actually boosted their traffic by almost 25,000%.
Moreover, Poppi—a soda drink—has seen a 7300%+ spike in website traffic after its advertisement aired, despite not having a link at all.
TurboTax’s ad tells us that your ad doesn’t always have to be ‘the best ad ever.” As long as it strikes the right cord, and contains necessary information—such as URL or other means of locating your product or service—you can reap the benefits.
What we learned from Super Bowl
Unless you have 10M bucks to spare, you probably won’t advertise in the Super Bowl next year. But the big game revealed some data that any old marketers can take home:
- Super Bowl ad costs stagnated in 2024 suggesting a possible plateau in the global advertising trend.
- Viewer trends continue to shift towards digital platforms, with streaming services and internet-connected devices steadily gaining ground.
- The rise of alternative Super Bowl broadcasts and the preference for non-traditional viewing methods indicate a potential decline in linear TV viewership, particularly among younger demographics.
Which could mean that the marketing landscape could look a bit different this year, especially with stalling ad costs and youngsters introducing new marketing channels.
It might take a Super Bowl-level tactic to win that game, huh?
Sources
The report sourced data from the following:
