How NBCU Scored the First $10 Million Super Bowl Ads

NBCUniversal’s Super Bowl 60 winning streak continues.

After mentioning it on a Puck podcast earlier this month, Mark Marshall, chairman, global advertising and partnerships, NBCUniversal, confirmed to ADWEEK that his team has sold a “handful” of 30-second Super Bowl units for $10 million or more. This marks the first time broadcasters have hit that number in the Big Game.

“While I would love to say it’s brilliant strategy and execution, part of it is just the marketplace demand,” Marshall told ADWEEK. “We did start earlier this year than in years past. There was so much interest in the Super Bowl and the Olympics, so we went to the marketplace earlier with packages that would include both of them.”

Marshall said NBCU was talking with marketers as early as fall 2024 about Super Bowl LX, which airs Feb. 8, and he noted that the inventory became “tighter and tighter” throughout the summer, with increased demand in certain categories such as tech and CPG.

Despite the demand, the NBCU ads president said the company didn’t add additional inventory, keeping the typical number of ad slots, which totals more than 80.

“There just was so much demand against it, and there were just not enough spots for everyone who wanted to be in,” Marshall said. “So the marketplace just drove the pricing up to $10 million-plus over the course of the summer and into the fall.”

Putting additional pressure on the market, more brands were requesting multiple ad units, or 60-second ads, than ever before, with Novartis, Rocket, and OpenAI being just a few of the examples in this year’s Big Game.

“Taking up those two blocks all of a sudden was stressing the capacity that we had pretty early in the system,” Marshall added.

Marshall also cited the company’s multi-sport offerings as a key to success, noting that in 2022, the last time NBCU had the Super Bowl and the Olympics, advertisers who chose a single sport missed reaching millions of viewers.

“If an advertiser only ran in the Olympics and did not run in the Super Bowl, they missed 30 million people. If a Super Bowl advertiser just ran in the Super Bowl and did not run in the Olympics, they lost 42 million people,” Marshall said.

During February, NBCU has the Super Bowl, the Winter Olympics, and the NBA All-Star Game, all of which have sold out ad inventory, according to the company. Following that, NBCU is continuing its sports-heavy calendar with the Spanish-language broadcast of the World Cup on Telemundo in June.

“People were starting to look at, ‘If I’m in the World Cup, if I’m in the Olympics, or I’m in the Super Bowl, how do I start to string these together?’ We started working with marketers on how to build plans, not just strict units,” Marshall said. “So when you look at it, about 70-75% of the Super Bowl advertisers will also be in the Olympics.”

Accelerating the Super Bowl playbook

NBCU showed signs of Super Bowl success early.

Last year, after initially asking for around $7 million for a 30-second spot in Super Bowl 60, NBCU’s price tag jumped to $8 million and an $8 million match across its other sports properties as early as July, ADWEEK previously reported. The company then announced a Super Bowl sellout in September, a month earlier than Fox’s announcement for Super Bowl 59.

And the success extends beyond in-game units.

Last year, pre-game ad units for Fox’s Super Bowl 59 broadcast fetched as much as $4.5 million, and post-game units reached around $4 million. One media buyer recently told ADWEEK that this year’s ads exceeded those prices, though Marshall was coy about revealing final numbers.

“Everything’s a little pricier than it was,” Marshall said.

Overtime is also already planned. In previous years, broadcasters have held live auctions for fourth-quarter overtime ad units. However, Marshall said NBCU wasn’t leaving things to chance.

“We already have conversations with advertisers, so if it happens, we actually have the game plan lined up already,” Marshall said. “I’m too nervous to sit there and not have a game plan in case overtime happens. And there have been so many events, so many close games in these playoffs, that I don’t think overtime is out of the question for this one.”

Following our interview with Marshall, a media-buying source told ADWEEK that prices were coming in at $4 million per overtime ad unit; however, NBCU couldn’t be reached for comment on the figure.

Regardless, all the pre-planning makes sense, as Marshall’s schedule for the week doesn’t have much flexibility.

With the game taking place at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, Calif., Marshall will be on the West Coast on Monday for media day, with interviews and meetings scheduled throughout the week, including a stop at ADWEEK House on Feb. 6. On Saturday, Marshall has a screening of all the ads in a row, and Sunday is for scenario planning, ensuring everything is running smoothly, and spending time with clients.

Then, immediately following the game, Marshall is being whisked off to Milan for the Winter Olympics, just in time to arrive and talk about Super Bowl ratings the next morning. There isn’t much breathing room, but that’s not bothering NBCU’s ads chief, who noted he was most proud of the team for bringing together the whole NBCU ecosystem for the sports push.

“We want all of our couple hundred advertisers that will run across that day all to be happy with the experience, and hopefully they all sell a lot of product as a result of their investment in that day across Olympics, as well as the Super Bowl,” Marshall said.