There will be a couple of departures from the recent Super Bowl advertising norm when the Big Game kicks off on CBS next month. Most notably, the streak of significant annual increases in the going rate for 30 seconds of Super Bowl ad time is seemingly coming to an end. Projections from CBS are that the average price of a :30 timeslot will be around the same $2.2 million garnered by ABC for its 2000 Super Bowl telecast.
By comparison, the $2.2 million per :30 secured by ABC earlier this year was a whopping 37 percent increase over the $1.6 million fetched by FOX for the ’99 Super Bowl. And that $1.6 million represented a 23 percent jump over the per :30 cost for the ’98 Super Bowl on NBC.
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The other related new wrinkle in the upcoming Super Bowl XXXV as compared to its 2000 predecessor is the exodus of dot-com advertisers. On Super Sunday 2000, dot-com firms purchased some 20 percent of the available ad slots, a dynamic that helped to drive up the average price of a :30 time buy. Reportedly, some Web firms paid as much as $3 million for 30 seconds on Super Bowl XXXIV.
However, not all dot-com advertisers have jumped the Super Bowl ship. Monster.com is slated to run during the Super Bowl telecast for the third straight year. The global online job/career search Web site has bought two :30 slots—one each in the first and fourth quarters of the game. Additionally, monster.com has secured two ad slots during the pre-game show.
The ’99 Super Bowl ad "When I Grow Up," directed by Bryan Buckley of bicoastal/international hungry man for Wenham, Mass.-based agency Mullen, helped generate 2.2 million job searches for monster.com to process during the 24-hour period following the Super Bowl. That jumped to 4.4 million job searches following this year’s Super Bowl, during which monster.com ran "The Road Not Taken," directed by Andrew Douglas, then of bicoastal/international Satellite, for Mullen. (Douglas is now with bicoastal Anonymous.) Monster.com’s name recognition also went up exponentially due in part to its Super Bowl exposure.
Monster.com has since changed agencies. Arnold Communications, Boston, will be conceptualizing the new monster.com advertising for Super Bowl XXXV, which airs Jan. 28, on CBS.