• by Wayne Friedman , January 14, 2014

The Super Bowl as a TV advertising vehicle remains strong -- in terms of revenue, commercial time, and more importantly, commercial tune-in.

Last year’s event on CBS pulled in 11% more revenue to $292 million over 2012’s game, and was 14% higher to $4 million for the average 30-second commercial, according to Kantar Media.

This year's game -- Super Bowl XLVIII -- will air Feb 2 on Fox, played at MetLife Stadium, East Rutherford, New Jersey. Media buyers contacted by Media Daily News believe the average 30-second commercial in 2014 is going for around $4.1 million to $4.4 million.

Commercial time has generally increased over the last 10 years, from around 41 minutes for the 2004 and 2005 games to 48 minutes for the 2011 and 2012 games.

In 2013, there was some unnatural inflation due to a stadium power outage, where CBS re-ran a commercial pod, uncertain whether those commercials made it to air. A year ago, there were 51 minutes and 40 seconds of commercial time and 97 total TV commercials. In 2012, there were 78 commercials, while 2011 witnessed 96 TV ads and 2010, 104 commercials.

When it comes to commercial tuning, Kantar Media says last year’s Super Bowl earned a 101.6 commercial tuning index -- which means the average Super Bowl commercial audience was 1.6% larger than for the game itself.

In addition, the company says only 0.7% of the Super Bowl audience tuned away for the average commercial during the 2013 game. This compares to 3% to 4% who tune away during other TV programming.

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