NBC Super Bowl Ads to Cost $3 Million: The Super Bowl has always been a tough ticket, but now NBC is telling advertisers it will cost them $3 million just to get into the game -- for 30 seconds.
NBC Universal, a unit of General Electric Co., plans to announce next week that $3 million will be the entry price for a commercial at the 2009 Super Bowl. While individual slots have sold at that level before, it's never been the starting point for negotiations for the dozens of 30-second ads sold for the game. It represents a price increase of more than 10%, roughly double the usual annual rise. [...]
For this year's Super Bowl, Fox, a unit of News Corp., received about $2.7 million for 30 seconds, though some of the final slots went for about $3 million, according to media buyers. [...]
Of course, some longtime advertisers, including marketers that buy multiple spots every year, won't be paying $3 million for their ads.
Anheuser-Busch, for example, has locked in a rate of about $2 million for each of its spots, according to a person familiar with the matter.
The brewer often buys about 10 ads every Super Bowl and purchases ad time months and years in advance.
