Super Bowl Commercials

Competition for Super Bowl commercial spots becomes additionally expensive each year. Advertisers look to create Super Bowl commercials more inventive and original than last year, and other Super Bowl commercial advertisers. The reason for the extra creativity and flair is because of the potential of high advertising revenue. Super Bowl commercial advertisers also censor their commercials due to the Janet Jackson and Justin Timberlake “costume malfunction” and the FCC’s strict reprimand. 

Since 1967, there have been 39 Super Bowls with 60 spots in each, equaling to more than 2,200 Super Bowl commercials, and more on the way. 2006 was a record setting year for Super Bowl commercials. A 30 second Super Bowl commercial cost between $2.5 and $2.6 million, highest selling price for Super Bowl commercials ever. Anheuser-Busch bought ten 30 second Super Bowl commercials that year as well. Super Bowl XL was the first Super Bowl to broadcast their Super Bowl commercials in HDTV.

According to USA Today, Bud Light’s “Magic Fridge” was Super Bowl XL’s most popular Super Bowl commercial. Another famous Super Bowl commercial is the 1973 “creamy” Noxzema commercial featuring Super Bowl legend Joe Namath and a pre-Charlie’s Angels Farrah Fawcett. The longest running Super Bowl commercial is from Disney. “I’m going to Disney World!” has been running for 20 years.

There also have been other extremely memorable Super Bowl commercials, such as 1984’s Apple Computer Super Bowl commercial, directed by Ridley Scott. A giant video screen, featuring the IBM "God", designates people as slaves to IBM. Then, a person swings a blunt object at the screen, destroying it. One of 1993 finest Super Bowl commercial moments featured a McDonald’s basketball showdown between Larry Bird and Michael Jordan trying to out shoot each other from all aspects of the court and beyond. 1999 marked one the first Super Bowl commercials from a .com company, monster.com. In 2006, Dove thought to advertise to the female audience, with their Super Bowl commercial “Campaign for Real Beauty”. The message behind the message? Beauty is more than skin deep.

With the forward progress of today’s technology, Super Bowl commercials are also being aired on the web, and fans can download their favorite Super Bowl commercial on to their cell phones or computers. There also was concern about the digital recorder TiVo, and that the subscribers would fast forward through the Super Bowl commercials. TiVo reported that viewers were actually pausing and rewinding back to the previous or their favorite Super Bowl commercials.