How Much Does a Super Bowl Ad Cost [& Does It Get ROI]? A Data-Backed Deep Dive

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Whether you're a diehard Super Bowl fan or, like me, prefer watching superb owls, you gotta admit: Super Bowl commercials are pretty great.

They're also pretty expensive. And still, Fox, which holds the rights to Super Bowl LIX, easily sold all the ad spots for the big game on February 9, 2025.

Let's take a look at what goes into the most expensive TV ads in the world, how much they've cost throughout the history of the big game, and what brands are really getting out of them.

Table of Contents

How much does a Super Bowl ad cost?

It's a little tricky to put a number to the cost of an average, non-Super Bowl TV ad, since the numbers can vary from a couple hundred thousand to several million dollars. But let's give this question some context:

• In 2024 (Kansas City Chiefs 25 - San Francisco 49ers 22), U.S. and Canadian advertisers spent an estimated $69 billion on TV advertising. That's the GDP of Costa Rica.
• The top 10 TV advertisers in the U.S. - we're talking brands like Geico, Burger King, and T-Mobile - spent an average of nearly $7.5 million every week in 2023 (Chiefs 38 - Philadelphia Eagles 35).
• Upfront primetime ad sales - these are the ads you'll see on major TV networks between about 8 and 11 p.m. or 7 and 10 p.m., depending on your time zone - were projected to hit $19.12 million in 2024, which is actually a slight decrease from 2023.

Google's 90-second "Loretta" ad from the 2020 Super Bowl (Tampa Bay Buccaneers 31 - Chiefs 9) cost the search behemoth $16.8 million ($20.5 million today).

Drilling down a little further, let's look at the five most expensive 30-second ad spots during the 2020/21 broadcast television season, according to a Statista report:

• NBC Sunday Night Football: $783,718 per ad
• Fox Thursday Night Football: $624,626 per ad
• NBC's This Is Us: $476,352 per ad
• NBC's The Voice (Monday): $254,224 per ad
• Fox's The Masked Singer: $225,764 per ad

Awards season is also catnip for advertisers, with a 30-second spot during the 2024 Academy Awards commanding an average of $2.2 million.

Amazon's 90-second "Before Alexa" ad from 2020 cost $16.8 million ($20.5 million today).

In 2025, 30-second Super Bowl ad spots sold for about $7 million a pop. That's nearly 220% more than a spot at the Oscars, and nearly 800% more than a regular season Sunday Night Football commercial.

And that's just to air the ad - one time. It doesn't account for celebrity spokespeople, who are making a cool $1 - $3 million each; premium ad agency costs; production and post-production costs; even the marketing budget for the ads themselves.

In recent years, between 70 and 100 commercials have aired during each Super Bowl game, adding up to around 40 minutes of commercials.

In 2012 (New York Giants 21 - New England Patriots 17), Super Bowl ads cost $3.5 million ($4.9 million today) for a 30-second spot. Chevrolet and OK Go's musical Rube Goldsbergian machine took four months of prep and cost an estimated $500k - $1m to produce ($700k - $1.4m today).

Some brands snag decorated Hollywood directors for the shoots, and while numbers are hard to come by, it's safe to assume that these directors raked in some cash:

• The Coen Brothers directed the 2017 (Patriots 34 - Atlanta Falcons 28) Mercedes ad, an homage to the counterculture biker film Easy Rider.

• At the 1984 Super Bowl (Las Vegas Raiders 38 - Washington, D.C. 9), a Ridley Scott-helmed Orwellian ad introduced Apple's first-ever Macintosh computer.

• David Fincher directed a swaggering Brad Pitt in Heineken's "Beer Run" from 2005 (Patriots 24 - Eagles 21)

If you've watched even one Super Bowl, you probably know the brands at play - usually the biggest names in tech, food, computer, and beer. Budweiser, Booking.com, Dunkin', and Volkswagen were favorites of the 2024 Super Bowl.

Even though Google and Amazon share the title for most expensive Super Bowl ad ever, the King of Beers is the King of Super Bowl ad spend. Anheuser-Busch spent an estimated $470.5 million on its wildly popular Budweiser ads between 1967 and 2020.

In 1999 (Denver Broncos 34 - Falcons 19), a 30-second Super Bowl ad cost $1.6 million ($3.1 million today).

84 Lumber's "The Journey Begins" spot cost $16.2 million in 2017 ($20.1 million today), making it among the most expensive Super Bowl ads in history.

How Much Can You Buy With the Cost of a Super Bowl Ad?

Have millions burning a hole in your pocket but missed the deadline for a Super Bowl LIX ad? Here's what else you could spend $7 million on:

• A 24-acre private island in the Bahamas
• 16 fully tricked-out Rolls-Royce Ghosts or 241 mid-range Honda Civics
• 1.7 million gallons of non-organic 2% milk
• Feed 3,835 superb owls for one year*
• Between 17 and 28 chief marketing officers
• 140 entry-level marketers
• 70,000 seats on the Canva Teams plan

* It's illegal to own an owl as a pet in the U.S. Number based on estimates from wildlife rescues and zoos that feed Great Horned Owls.

What doesn't cost $7 million is software like Marketing Hub or our ad management software. You can build or manage your ad campaigns, whether you're targeting football fans or superb owl enthusiasts.

How Super Bowl Ad Prices Have Changed Over Time

The first Super Bowl was played in 1967 (Green Bay Packers 35 - Chiefs 10), and NBC and CBS charged brands $37,500 for each ad, or about $360k in today's money.

A decade later, in 1977 (Oakland Raiders 32 - Minnesota Vikings 14), brands were forking over $125k (about $675k today). In 1987 (Giants 39 - Broncos 20), 30 seconds cost $600k ($1.7m today); by 1997 (Packers 35 - Patriots 21) it was $1.2m ($2.38m today).

The Betty White Snickers ad from 2010 (New Orleans Saints 31 - Indianapolis Colts 17) is estimated to have cost $4 - $5 million ($5.8 - $7.3 million today).

Another decade, another (million) dollar(s). In 2007 (Colts 29 - Chicago Bears 17), ads averaged $2.39m ($3.72m today); in 2017, it was $5m ($6.5m today).

Is a Super Bowl ad worth the cost?

The short answer: Probably not. Unless you do marketing for a brand with a positively enormous marketing budget, a single $7 million ad spot isn't even on the table.

But for brands that do have that kind of spend, the ROI can be significant, with Super Bowl ads in the zeitgeist for several weeks before and after the big game. (I don't watch the Super Bowl - but I definitely watch all the ads as soon as they're online.)

And 123 million U.S. viewers watched Super Bowl LVIII - second only to the moon landing - and nearly a third of viewers say that the commercials are their favorite part of the game. Your $7m ad is getting a lot of eyeballs on it.

According to Kantar research in 2021, "Super Bowl ads delivered an average return on investment (ROI) of $4.60 per dollar spent, with many brands in the double digits."

Brad Adgate, described as a veteran media analyst, told the New York Times in 2024, "In this era of fragmentation, the Super Bowl is what television used to be."

It's arguably the only true mass-market live event of the year, reaching nearly every demographic. Beauty brands like NYX and Dove have entered or re-entered the Super Bowl ad game, putting the lie to anybody who thinks football isn't for girls, women, or drag queens.

In a 2024 interview with NPR, Maria Rodas put the ROI of a Super Bowl ad in simple terms. Rodas is a marketing professor at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, and a self-described "big fan" of Super Bowl ads - in her household, talking is allowed during the game but not during commercials.

Rodas told NPR, "[Super Bowl ads are] like mini-movies. [Advertisers] hire these big celebrities. The production value is insane. And so all of a sudden, $7 million is probably, like, the smallest of what they spend compared to the rest [of the money] that they put into creating these."

"To have this almost undivided attention provides an amazing opportunity for marketers to create a narrative, to really be able to connect at a much deeper level with consumers."

Lessons in Super Bowl Marketing

That connection is important whether you have a $7 million or $700 ad budget.

And plenty of brands have found alternatives to shelling out $7 million big ones.

So don't despair if you're doing marketing on a modest or even shoestring budget - $7 million can buy you 100+ million viewers, but no amount of money can make up for bad marketing.

Topics: Advertising

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