You’d be surprised to learn that not many people watch the Super Bowl for the football. You probably know someone like that, or you might be that person yourself. They watch the commercials, the halftime show, and for the fact that everyone else is watching. Brands tend to notice this and use it to their advantage for strong advertising.
A thirty-second Super Bowl ad now costs about eight million dollars for airtime, and for this year’s 60th game, some ad slots reached ten million dollars. That price covers the broadcast slot only; it does not include filming, marketing, or paying the celebrities featured in the ads.
It hasn’t always been like this. Much like the economy we know today, as demand grew and costs rose, Super Bowl ads became more expensive.
When the first Super Bowl aired in 1967, a thirty-second ad cost between $37,000 and $45,000. Over time, that price kept increasing. By 1990, the cost reached about seven hundred thousand dollars. It reached one million dollars in 1995. By 2017, it passed five million dollars. Now in 2026, it has surpassed ten million dollars. As Sports History puts it, the cost worked out to about two hundred thirty-three thousand three hundred thirty-three dollars per second for a 30-second ad during the 2024 Super Bowl between the Kansas City Chiefs and the San Francisco 49ers.
This price increase starts to make sense when you realize how many people are watching. The Super Bowl attracts an audience that almost no other major event can match. About one hundred twenty-seven million people watched the most recent game live (2025). For advertisers, this means they reached 127 million people at the exact same.
These ads work because viewers expect something new and creative from brands each year. The Super Bowl almost feels incomplete without the commercials. People talk about them the next day. They get excited when they see their favorite celebrity or influencer pop up on the screen, and, most importantly for brands, their audience decides what the next trendy thing they can get their hands on is. Some viewers show up mainly for the ads and don’t really care who wins.
There’s a clear reason why this happens. Research on Super Bowl advertising shows that humor and surprise, as well as familiar faces, keep people watching longer and help ads stay with you even after the game ends. If an ad makes you laugh or catches you off guard, you’re more likely to remember the brand behind it. That’s why the next day at work or school, someone will always ask, “Did you see that one commercial?”
What outcome are brands hoping to achieve from this investment? Well, in 2021, advertisers spent about 435 million dollars on Super Bowl commercials. Using Kantar’s estimate for that year, those ads generated more than 1.6 billion dollars in revenue. That’s the outcome brands are striving for.
The Super Bowl also works to boost brand engagement and revenue because, as market researchers explain, it’s one of the few times where entertainment, advertising, and national attention intersect.
For viewers, it’s as simple as you watch it because the ads are entertaining, they’re expected, and they give you something to talk about afterward. For brands, it’s a huge investment. However, the Super Bowl provides live attention on an incomparable scale that’s hard to find anywhere else.
Ten million dollars for just thirty seconds sounds absurd at first. However, when companies look at the numbers, like how many people watch, how long the ad stays memorable, and what comes back in revenue, this large investment is worth every penny.
