Promoting TV shows during the Super Bowl
February 7, 2011 5:14 PM   Subscribe

Why do TV networks do promos for their shows (like for Glee or House last night) during the Super Bowl?

With 30 second ads fetching over $2.5 million this year, I'd think they could maximize their earnings by selling the spots to advertisers. Perhaps they think that the incremental viewers they'll receive for the promo'd shows will pay out better over the long term. Or maybe there is something else going on?
posted by John Frum to Media & Arts (8 answers total) 1 user marked this as a favorite
 
Different groups within a network have different budgets, and can "buy" time from other groups at "discounted rates," and the accounting is all settled up at the end. It's not one monolithic entity operating in perfect alignment, so the group handling Glee "bought" the time from the sports broadcasting group. And the sports group will do the same at some other point for some other reason.
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 5:18 PM on February 7, 2011 [1 favorite]


Cool Papa Bell is correct, though it's also possible that, at $2.5 million a pop, not all of the spots sold and the promos were inserted to fill space.
posted by chrchr at 5:25 PM on February 7, 2011 [1 favorite]


Everybody above is correct, of course.

Plus keep in mind that the Glee spots, in particular, were heavily sponsored by Chevrolet. While Chevy may not have been paying $5m/minute for every second of that, it's not like the Glee promotion was coming straight out of the pocket of anybody in the network. Chevy was paying for a lot of promotion spread across everything from the beginning of the Superbowl to the end of Glee.
posted by xueexueg at 5:47 PM on February 7, 2011


Another factor is that the networks see these huge audiences as an opportunity to convince viewers to stay tuned for the next show (Glee, in this case, I'm guessing from xueexueq's comment), and then hopefully enjoy it enough that they'll tune in again next week. Perhaps the potential of x% of the Super Bowl audience staying tuned in to watch Glee, and then y% of them liking it enough that they tune in again the following week is lucrative enough to justify using some of that advertising space for it.

On the other hand, what chrchr said ... maybe no other corporates bought those particular $2.5 mill spots.
posted by Diag at 6:11 PM on February 7, 2011


The Super Bowl probably draws a large percentage of viewers who may not normally watch the network the game is on, so the ads could induce them to watch the network's other shows.
posted by kirkaracha at 6:22 PM on February 7, 2011 [1 favorite]


Best answer: Think of media advertising for media as an investment. Sure, a 30 second spot for the Super Bowl is $2.5M-$2.8M. A spot for Glee is a a lot less - $272,694/30sec.

The Super Bowl has roughly 72 spots. An episode of Glee is 44 minutes, leaving 16 minutes of advertisments, or 32 spots.

The super bowl airs once a year and was watched by 111 million people. Glee airs 22 new episodes a season, and averages 9.77 million people.


So,
You generate $1.81/viewer for the Super Bowl for a once a year occurence
You generate $0.89/viewer on Glee for a 22 episode serial that is also in syndication.

Now, I'm not going to go to the next step, as I think the point has been proven - if you can convert one person to watch glee for two episodes, you've made up for your loss of revenue for the Super Bowl ad - lets not talk about if you actually get them hooked.
posted by Nanukthedog at 6:27 PM on February 7, 2011 [3 favorites]


Also, maybe Fox could charge $2.5MM because there were only 60 spots, with 12 other potential spots getting filled by Fox promos. Maybe with 72 spots, advertisers aren't willing to pay that much. So maybe they get the same total revenue for fewer spots. I'm just spitballing here; I might be way wrong.
posted by troywestfield at 8:50 AM on February 8, 2011


I'd think what kirkaracha said would be a big part of it. As far as I know, TV networks don't advertise with their competitors. So big events like the Super Bowl give them a captive audience to advertise their shows to people who don't normally watch.
posted by abcde at 3:58 AM on February 9, 2011


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