• by George Simpson , Featured Contributor, February 12, 2010

It is hard to calculate exactly how much advertisers paid for their Super Bowl 30 seconds of glory. Early rumors that the rate card was $3 million gave way to the reality of a soft ad market, and it is said that most paid in the neighborhood of $2.5 and $2.8 million -- only the second time in the event's history that the price was below the prior year's. No matter -- that is still a hell of a lot of money to pay for an ad, especially when you throw in the creative costs (and having to fly the client to Miami for the Maxim party -- oh, and the game). I am sure that since this year's game drew a record audience and the usual insane amount of publicity, the ROI quants are high-fiving all across the accounting floor.

To a big marketer like P&G, AT&T, Verizon, or in the good old days, GM, $2.5 million is walking around money -- but to most of us in the online space that is a significant amount of dough, and if we had it, we'd surely not spend it all in one fell swoop. What would be worth spending two and a half million clams for?

Cory Treffiletti, president, managing partner of Catalyst:SF and widely read MediaPost SPIN writer, says: "I might pay someone to write my columns for me while I sit on the beach." Perhaps with the new iPad, Cory can sit on the beach and write his column at the same time. Download the "You Too Can Be A Writer" app.

Newspaper loyalist and Tagman EVP of the New World, Chris Brinkworth says: "A Chevy Silverado gets about 22 mpg. So, if you lived on the moon, you could drive it to the store to pick your hard copy of NYTimes and back for just over a month before you ran out of gas money. Or -- you could just get a paid subscription, save the gas, save the paper and... save the paper." Given the condition of NY State's finances, Chris should expect a toll booth about every 50,000 miles or so.

It is really too bad that $2.5 million is not enough to retire on any more (unless you live in East Jesus, Alabama) because I suspect that would be the spend de choice of most of my other friends. How sweet would it be to walk into every media buyer -- who played donkey kong on their iPhone during your presentation or kept you waiting for an hour in the lobby, inferred you'd get the business, then never gave it to you, or asked for a CPM campaign rate that wouldn't even pay last month's electric bill -- and smack them with a 14 day-old mackerel as a way to announce your retirement?

You could take the $2.5 mil and parse it out to your staff who worked long days and weekends to finish the QA and get your ad technology running well enough to take it to market. Without them you'd be nowhere. On the other hand, they didn't put in any friends and family money and it really was your idea, so screw 'em. They get a paycheck.

You could text Haiti 250,000 times just for the fun of it, but then you'd have to ask yourself if they are any more deserving of your largesse than the homeless in your own city or the 25,000 other charities that do great work and are low on funds thanks to the recession. Jeez, who knew this would be so hard?

You could buy a huge schedule of online ads across lots of different sites, networks and portals and give a bunch of sales reps and managers enough ammo to protect their jobs for another 6 or 8 months. But that won't help all of your pals at the newspaper who are getting fired left, right and center.

You could attend every industry conference, summit and seminar that you are invited to (at that special rate just because you are, well, you) and buy everyone you meet there a drink. But then by May you'd be out of money.

You could reestablish your 401K to pre-recession levels, but that would be like spending the $50 your grandma sends you in her birthday card on toilet paper or tea bags.

I've got it. Take it to Vegas, bet it all on one pass at the roulette table, and see if you can double or triple your money. What? Yes, I guess that IS kinda like buying a Super Bowl ad.