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A 30-second ad spot in this year’s Super Bowl costs an average of $3.5 million. That’s an 84 percent increase from 10 years ago and the highest amount advertisers have ever had to pay. While that is quite the price hike, it is in line with the growth in TV audience, which has just about doubled over the past decade. But despite spending this much to reach such a massive audience at once, the results are rarely impressive.
Between 2002 and 2011, companies spent $2.5 billion on Super Bowl advertising, based on 24/7 Wall St.’s estimate. The top 10 spenders were responsible for more than one-third of that. And one company, Budweiser maker Anheuser-Busch InBev, spent almost $250 million over the past 10 years on Super Bowl ads, or a whopping one-tenth of all Super Bowl ad spending.
24/7 Wall St. ranked total spending for all of the companies that advertised during the Super Bowl in the past decade. An analysis of the top spenders reflects how bad this investment can be. While some, such as Hyundai and Toyota, have improved market share over that time, most have not. Based on total ad spending, product failures, change in market share, share price and sales, we identified the eight brands that wasted the most on the Super Bowl, including mega brands such as Coke, Budweiser, GM and Ford.
Based on 24/7 Wall St.’s analysis of Super Bowl ad spending, the top spenders fall into four major categories: automotive, film, food, -- including snacks and fast food -- and beverages. Four of the top 10 Super Bowl advertisers are auto companies. Another four of the 10 are food and beverage manufacturers. Three movie studios are in the top 25.
Because Super Bowl ads are used by a small number of industries, many companies in those industries are forced to advertise just to keep up. Most of the top 10 spenders are perennial also-rans. Yum! Brands, owner of KFC, Taco Bell and Pizza Hut, spent $67 million over the past 10 years. Meanwhile, McDonald’s, the indisputable market leader, spent less than half that amount and is not a top 10 spender. Similarly, E*Trade, well-known for the talking baby campaign, spent more than any other online brokerage firm, yet remains fourth in the industry.
24/7 Wall St.: Worst product flops of 2011
24/7 Wall St. tabulated all of the commercials from the past 10 Super Bowls, as archived by Adland, the “world’s largest archive of Super Bowl commercials.” Using that data, 24/7 calculated the number of commercials each company bought, as well as their length, including any available pregame, postgame and prime advertising commercials. To estimate the total amount each company spent on Super Bowl advertising in the past decade, we used the average costs of a 30-second commercial spot each year and the total number of minutes of advertising time recorded by Adland.
These are the eight brands that wasted the most on the Super Bowl.
1. Anheuser-Busch InBev
- Total ad spending (2002-2011): $246.2 million
- Super Bowls advertised in over last ten years: 10
- Average ads per Super Bowl: 8.7
- Change in share price (2002-current): N/a -- was purchased by InBev in 2008
- Change in market share: 52 percent (2002) - 48.3 percent (2011)
Since 2002, Anheuser Busch, brewer of Budweiser beer, bought close to a quarter of a billion in advertising. This is one-tenth of all the money spent on Super Bowl commercials by all companies during that period. The American beverage company was purchased in 2008 by Belgian InBev, forming one massive beverages company. That same year, the company purchased 13 separate Super Bowl ads, worth nearly $40 million in total -- the second-most spent by any company on ads in one year. Budweiser has featured some of the most iconic animals ever shown during the big game, including football-playing Clydesdales, jealous lizards, and more recently, partying dogs. Bud Light and Budweiser used to be the first and second most popular beers in the U.S. Despite the massive ad campaigns, the company lost the number two spot to Coors Light in 2011.
24/7 Wall St.: Eight industries the U.S. lost to China
2. PepsiCo
- Total ad spending (2002 - 2011): $209.7 million
- Super Bowls advertised in over past 10 years: 10
- Average ads per Super Bowl: 7.2
- Change in share price (2002 - current): +32.4 percent
- Change in market share: 31.4 percent (2002) - 29.3 percent (2010)
Although it is the second-largest soft drink company, PepsiCo is the number one soft drink company when it comes to Super Bowl advertising. Over the past decade, the company has spent over $200 million on advertising its products during the big game, airing an average of 7.2 ads per year. Of course, the company advertises much more than just Pepsi Cola. PepsiCo has run Super Bowl commercials advertising Gatorade, Sierra Mist, SoBe, Tostitos, Doritos and more. In 2010, PepsiCo spent over $358 million on television advertising compared to Coca-Cola’s $277 million. PepsiCo also aired 72 Super Bowl ads over the past 10 years compared to Coke’s 14. Despite all this, Coca-Cola remains the industry king of carbonated beverages, and Pepsi’s gallons sold dropped 32 percent between 2001 and 2010.
3. General Motors
- Total ad spending (2002-2011): $135.2 million
- Super Bowls advertised in over last ten years: 8
- Average ads per Super Bowl: 5.5
- Change in share price (2002-current): filed chapter 11 in 2009
- Change in market share: ~29 percent (2002) - 19.6 percent (2011)
Four separate automakers were among the top 10 spenders on Super Bowl ads. None, however, spent anything close to what General Motors has over the past ten years. GM bought more than $135 million-worth in advertising space during the big game. And although GM did not advertise in 2009 or 2010 while it was going through bankruptcy and recovery, it still spent more than Ford, Toyota and Hyundai combined. In 2005, the company ran 13 separate commercials -- tied with Pepsi and Anheuser-Busch for the most in a single year. Last year, the carmaker ran five commercials, all of which were Chevy ads, including one produced in collaboration with DreamWorks for "Transformers: Dark of the Moon."
24/7 Wall St.: Ten brands that will disappear in 2012
- Total ad spending (2002 – 2011): $67.8 million
- Super Bowls advertised in over past 10 years: 9
- Average ads per Super Bowl: 3
- Change in share price (2002 – current): +366.0 percent
- Change in market share: 37 percent (2000) – 28 percent (2011) (KFC)
Yum! Brands is one of the largest fast food companies in the world, operating restaurants including KFC, Taco Bell and Pizza Hut. When the company spends on Super Bowl advertising, it usually avoids its most popular brand, KFC. Only five of the company’s 27 Super Bowl commercials in the past decade have advertised The Colonel’s restaurant. Instead, Yum! focuses on its smaller brands, Pizza Hut and Taco Bell, which had 12 and 10 ads over that time, respectively. Although much of it is owed to international expansion, Yum! Brands’ share price has increased 366 percent since 2002. KFC, Taco Bell and Pizza Hut sales combined are still leagues behind McDonald’s.
Click here to read all of 24/7 Wall St.'s Eight Brands That Wasted the Most on the Super Bowl.
Leave a Comment:
Flawed analysis. It's unknown what these companys' market share would have been without the Super Bowl advertising. It very well might have been even lower, and this advertising might very well have actually added to their bottom line.
Reminds me of those who say that "the stimulus didn't work". Maybe it did, maybe it didn't. We'll never know what the economy would have been like right now without it.
Completely agree John. Correlation does not imply causation.
Bingo, who are these analysts that constantly come up with these crappy analysis for MSNBC....
When I first viewed this "title" I said to my wife....... This is going to be funny! Thats like putting a dab of peanut butter out for a rat. There isn't a liberal/progressive that could avoid biting at that title.
When I first viewed this headline, I said to my wife: This is going to be funny! That's like putting a dab of peanut butter out for a rat. There isn't a conservative/Republican that could avoid biting at that headline just like I did.
I'm with you Larry. I was looking for Pets.com horror stories or something. Headline bit me too.
Couldnt they think of a better title? This one sounds like a hit piece..
What a waste of cash...... So many in the world or our country could benefit from the amount of money thrown into Super Bowl advertising. Barf. I won't buy any of their products....
I totally agree. Even though I do buy some of the products advertised, I don't do it because of 30 seconds during the Superbowl. Anyone realize the amount of money generated by this game? It's insane. And guess who gets to pay for it?? Salaries, security, everything. Good ol'e you and me. Personally I would like to see my money go toward something that has meaning in life and is worthwhile. Not some players millions of dollars salary. Average family or even a father and son can't even afford to go to the big game. Lucky to be able to afford to go to a regular season game. Many can't even afford NFL ticket on cable/sattelite. It's a party for the 1% and I want NO part of it.
Geo: We are in absolute agreement.... God bless you and yours and maybe someday we all can enjoy some of the finer things in life without the guilt that others can't.
What are you talking about? The best seat for most sports games is in the house. You can watch most games on regular channels, and you can always go to a local casino or sports bar or plenty of other places to watch the game if it's not on those channels. And the free market system dictates, as it should, the value of any product or service. The beautiful part of what separates America from pretty much any other country in the world is that we all—including you—have the freedom and opportunity to pursue as much wealth as you want without the government stealing it from you.
Instead of using your jealousy to bash people who are more financially wealthy (which may not necessarily mean they are happier) than you are, why not focus that energy on reviewing the decisions you've made in the past so you can figure out what decisions you should make in the future to get the things you want.
Because frankly, the greed here isn't coming from the wealthy, it's the sum of all the people like you that expect to get things for less than the effort you put into it. And the reason why you don't believe that to be true is because you keep lying to yourself through a failure to properly manage expectations.
Vglance: Advertising agent? Go wave your flag elsewhere... thank you. Some of us commoner's feel differently. Wealth isn't stolen? Now who is full of BS!
Let's look at the numbers to see what the truth really is. The last year for which the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has released figures is 2007, so what follows is a bit out of date. But I can't imagine that the percentages have changed much in '08 and '09. Look at what the government's own figures show:
•The top 1 percent of taxpayers in this country pay 40.42 percent of all Income taxes, not including their business taxes.
•For the top 5 percent, the percentage is even higher. The 7.1 million taxpayers who fit this description pay 60.63 percent of all Federal income taxes.
•The bigger the net, the greater the discrepancy.
The top 25 percent of taxpayers (35.3 million of us) can take pride in knowing that we contribute 86.59 percent of federal taxes. And the top 50 percent (70.5 million of us) pay 97.11 of the total taxes collected.
In comparison, the bottom 50 percent of filers—some 70.5 million of Americans with any kind of income—pay a minuscule 2.89 percent of federal tax dollars.
This the bottom 50% "steal" from the Top 50% by not carrying their weight.
Vglance- don't be such a douche. Everyone is entitled to their opinion. MY opinion is that professsional sports has gone way overboard. Team owners expect cities to pay for and use low-life taxpayers to foot the bill so the millionaires can play in a new stadium. When I was a kid, you could get Dodgers and Angels tickets for $7 and they weren't bad seats. Now to take your family out to a game, it's several $100. So yes I think we spend to much for what it is.
roger, if you make less than $32,000 a year,which is the bottom 50%, i will gladly take on your tax burden. I am no where near a rich man, but I know i could not survive on that much living in the northeast!
roger- thats because the lower 50% IS working for the top 1% for low wages so the 1% can rent the sky boxes at the Super Bowl for $581,000
I'm the douche? I'm not part of the 99% of Americans who have less than 3 months of money in reserves in case there is an interruption in my income. That's because my priorities and value system isn't measured against my friends, family and neighbors. I don't think to myself, "Well they own iPads and smart phones and travel and buy nice accessories and drive a decent car, and their income is below mine or about the same, so I absolutely must be able to afford those things as well."
You guys have no leg to stand on, you just don't see it because you're completely brainwashed by the media and advertisers to believe you deserve a certain standard of living when you don't. I don't go to baseball games because I recognize that while technically I can afford it, it's not a smart financial decision considering I'm saving to buy a house this year. Do I get angry that tickets are $100+ for a baseball game because it's out of my price range?
Of course not. Why? Because the market dictates the price. If the stadium can't fill seats, it has no choice but to lower the price of the tickets. But guess what? The stadiums are packed. Apparently there are plenty of people out there who don't have a problem with the price enough not to go. Entertainment and pleasure, whether it's a ticket to an event, a night out bowling or even a pack of cigarettes is a LUXURY when you first haven't saved for retirement and especially for rainy days.
Take a second to read that last sentence once more because it's that important.
If you're buying luxury items before you are financially stable, you have no one to blame but yourself.
And that is why this country is so screwed up. People have convinced themselves that the torture from boredom is so great, that they just have to spend money on things, even if they should be saving, simply because they'd go stir crazy.
It doesn't matter whether you agree with me or not. Every civilization has come and gone through a natural life cycle. And if they aren't conquered by war, they are destroyed by themselves through a slow bleed they are too stupid or careless to recognize.
You're just playing the role and there's too many of you to be stopped. And you don't want to be stopped either because you're so convinced your reality is the right one that you will never accept any alternative. I used to be one of you, then I started my own company, was forced to learn everything from economics on both a macro and micro level, international trade, manufacturing, logistics, supply chain, taxes, finance, the markets, and managing payroll.
I developed a technology that aids in the process of mass hiring (high volume staffing for companies with call centers, for example). I am directly connected to the employment industry and my clients cross all industries and run from small businesses to global F50 companies.
I watch fox news but read MSNBC every day to get perspective from both sides (99.999% of people don't do that so they can't tell what's propaganda and what isn't).
I'm not better than anyone, I have my own flaws I struggle to overcome. But I mention what I do to give you a frame of reference because the amount of time and effort I've devoted directly and indirectly to understanding how the world works is light years ahead of the average person (at a cost of not knowing a second language or ability to play a musical instrument and a million other sacrifices I'd have loved to learn).
So call me a douche, it speaks volumes about your character and the opportunity you have to enhance your emotional intelligence. It doesn't change the path that you and many like you are taking that will destroy the greatest experiment in freedom this world has ever seen.
My character and life are just fine thank you. And you come off as kind of smug in that you talk about what you are developing and this and that. Then you try to say you are no better, but the way you ramble on you can tell you think you are better. So yeah, I'll stick to my original post
Agree with John. We don't know how much market share these companies would have lost had they not spent the money on Super Bowl advertising. I'm gonna say "the people who work in the advertising departments know what they are doing"...
Ed ---- think about what you just wrote, "the people in the advertising departments know what they are doing."
That's the most ridiculous thing I've ever seen in print.
Truer words could never have been spoken or written. WASTE INDEED!
This is a horrid, horrid analysis. I guess I can understand a writer making these mistakes, but I can't imagine an editor letting this get posted. (You guys do have editors, yes?).
What is the advertising value of all those commercials that show up on U-tube, email, facebook, etc.? Huh?
You all sound like a bunch of communist. Not everyone can be wealthy and not everyone can have everything. What you don't comprehend is that the money spent is supporting thousands of jobs. From marketing to the manufacturing of the computers used to create those adds. There are thousands of jobs that are being supported by one of the biggest add time of the year. And no that money is not going to the players maybe a small portion but not the majority. I would much rather see that money spent then go into the pockets of the very few CEO's. If you want to see growth in this country get the major companies with lots of cash on hand to start spending. No one is going to just give money way it has to be earned. If was given away our society would be a place you would not want to live in.
The real losers in superbowl advertising are the companies that did an ad then folded like Pets.com
Why should it be considered free market when cities use tax money to build free stadiums for the use of millionaire football players and billionaire team owners? When Denver built the current Broncos stadium, they leased the land for 1 dollar per year, and they levied taxes on 6 counties to pay for building the stadium. The Denver city council also passed a waiver to the law that forbids blocking the view of the mountains from city parks. What is the free market price for that?
Budweiser isn't even an American Company anymore, Inbev bought them, that's why I don't drink Budweiser anymore.
Yuengling is Americas oldest Beer. They are still American and that's what I drink now.
Buy American!
i buy things because i see cool commercials! wait... no i don't.
A company pays more for commercials than it does in advertising the ingredients added to its product.
"McDonald's confirmed that it has eliminated the use of ammonium hydroxide — an ingredient in fertilizers, household cleaners and some roll-your-own explosives — in its hamburger meat."
Popularity does not breed acceptability.
Makes me wonder what else they put in their food. The image of that pink stuff is going to prevent me from picking up a burger from there for a long, long time. Disgusting.
How and why did we get to the point that sporting events are indespensible entertainment? Are we so bored or worse, intellectually inept, that we can't see how useless the ever expanding and costly sport business is. They( owners and players) get richer, while you are that much poorer. You get nothing but fleeting satisfaction while they get your hard earned money. The rich and their guests sit in the special luxury boxes. The celebraties, sit up close, as that is a priviledge reserved for the another special group.Why are they special? Meanwhile the "regular fan" sits below, in inferior locations that are not cheap seats by any measure of value. Why do you care who wins, you didn't ( unles you bet on the outcome). We've been manipulated into thinking that the sporting clubs somehow represent us ( or we bask in their glory as though it was ours). We wear their team emblems/insignias , even though they do not give a damn about us and we have no cultural relationship with their organization. We promote their brands at our expense. Why?? We only share the fleeting moment with them, for which they charge us royally! They represent their own moneyed interest and could carel less about you and your family. Ever look into what they pay the people who serve you the beer, hot dogs and other junk at the stadium? They pay them peanuts, while charging you over the top prices for peanuts and assorted junk food. Why do we continue to support this nonsense? The super bowl is the hight of fantasy as it repsents the ultimate rip off of the patron for an excuse to " party". Their version of partying involves or produces drunkeness, drug use, often adultrus sex and over the top high school antics played out by immature adults looking for excitement. If I'm only half right, this is a mess that needs to be seen for what it is, addressed and brought into line. I'm sorry for raining my comments on your party. I just want ou to see another side of what is happening in our country and world. Notwithstanding my comments, I hope everyone has a good time and gets home safetly.
You have a point. It is grown men playing with a ball. Quite silly when you think of all the money and effort thrown away to give men a testosterone rush, lol.
I love the Super Bowl commercials, let's hope they are not more exciting than the game.. here's a great article on SEX and if it helps Super Bowl commercials sell
I am a die heart NFL fan who looks forward to the Big Game each year. The ads make it just as exciting.
Maybe you're die HARD fan?
we always have someone who has to be a spell checker don't we paramed?! get over yourself because if you're going to correct someone make sure you're grammar is correct! I believe it's maybe you're "a" die hard fan!
Heart is spelled correctly. Maybe this person would like to know the actual phrase and not embarrass themselves in the future. I was not spell checking, but you are grammer checking- so who needs to get over themselves? lol