Commercials Worth Millions

Men watch the Super Bowl for the nonstop action of the game and the food. Women, on the other hand, rarely watch the game. They may tune in to see the half time show or the commercials. I, myself, tune in every year just to see which company had the best commercial.

Well, like myself, "Close to 50% of [Super Bowl] viewers tune in to actually watch the commercials, more than they watch the game," said Stephen Master, vice president of Nielsen Sports media research.

During the 2012 Super Bowl, a 30 second commercial cost an average of $3.5 million dollars. This number seems shocking, after all why would companies invest so much of its money for a 30 second commercial.

Randle D. Raggio, assistant professor of marketing at the University of Richmond, conducted some calculations in 2011 that showed just how much of a product the company would have to sell to make up for the money spent on a commercial.

According to his calculations, Snickers would have to sell 6,329,406 candy bars to pay for its ad. Bridgestone would have to sell 298,656 tires and Skechers would have to sell 205,339 pairs of shoes. Being able to sell a large amount of a product would not be difficult for the company because it all comes down to how impressive the commercial is and if it grabbed the viewers attention.

Take GoDaddy.com for instance; though the website has nothing to do with women wearing nearly nothing, it grabs the viewers attention and would spark conversation and interest in the product.

In the beginning of it's career, GoDaddy struggled. The company needed to find a way to boost their company. "Back in 2004 [when the company launched its first Super Bowl ad], we had the very best program of everyone we were competing with, but market share just wasn't growing enough," says Go Daddy CEO Bob Parsons. "A marketing firm said, 'Nobody knows that you exist and you should consider stepping into the mainstream media.' And the Super Bowl was right around the corner."

In just the first year alone, market share rose from 16 percent to 20 percent! As the Super Bowl ads continued market share continued to jumped to 32 percent in 2006 to 42 percent in 2007.

We have all seen those commercials where we try to guess what the company is that is showing the commercial. Sometimes it becomes difficult when the subject matter of the commercial and the actual company is completely different. Take a commercial where a dog finds himself too fat to fit through the door flap. The dog begins to work and becomes skinny enough to fit through the flap. It is hard to believe that the company behind the commercial is Volkswagen, a car company.

There is such a high amount of car commercials that are aired during the Super Bowl because the target audience watching the Super Bowl is men, and men typically like cars. For the 2012 Super Bowl, the Chevy Sonic, Hyundai Veloster, and the Fiat 500 were the top cars that made the viewers want to know more about the specific cars seen in the commercials. Not only do the car commercials benefit the auto company but also car search engines. Edmunds.com and Autotrader.com showed that after the commercials aired, viewers searched the cars to learn more about the cars. "At Edmunds.com, page views leapt 3,354 percent in the moments after the ad." The reason behind the thousands of page views is most likely because of the content of the commercial. The majority of the commercial is a nerdy man being turned on by an attractive Italian model.

Some of the commercials that are seen during the Super Bowl are very clever and really grab my attention. However, there are some commercials that I find myself confused at what point and product the company was trying to sell. I takes a large group of people to brainstorm and come up with ideas to make sure that their commercial is a big success and that the money that is spent into airing their commercial will then cause the company to increase their sales.