Record Super Bowl ad prices bring renewed scrutiny to measurement

With some advertisers paying a record $10 million for a Super Bowl spot, expectations around performance are rising just as fast as the price tag. Brand awareness alone is no longer enough.

TV networks and advertisers are under greater scrutiny to provide better measurement of both viewership and campaign performance.

To that end, Nielsen is debuting a new measurement tool during the Super Bowl aimed at better capturing co-viewing, or where multiple people watch the same screen. By incorporating data from 78,000 wearable devices, the company says it can better estimate how many people are watching live.

This comes after the NFL accused Nielsen of undercounting millions of people last September, particularly those watching while co-viewing. The league’s chief data and analytics officer, Paul Ballew, believes this new co-viewing data is a major step forward.

“We feel better about where we’re at from a measurement standpoint this year — certainly versus last year and certainly versus a few years ago,” Ballew told Sports Business Journal. “Still work to be done, but we should give Nielsen credit where credit’s due that they are listening, they are taking action, because we certainly have been on the other side of the table where our frustrations have been very intense with them.”

Ballew added that the NFL is more confident that viewership for this year’s Super Bowl will be measured more accurately. This comes after last year’s game set viewership records across both broadcast and streaming.

Since Nielsen adopted Big Data + Panel as its official currency in the fall, sports have been among the biggest beneficiaries. College football and the NFL have both posted record audiences, with the NFL seeing its highest viewership since 1989.

“It unlocked for sports — the NFL, Sunday Night Football — all the undercounted viewers under that old panel-only approach,” Jorge De La Rosa, NBC Sports’ senior vice president of research, told Sports Business Journal.

This expanded measurement suggests that the Super Bowl could set another record. NBCUniversal has told some media buyers and brands that it’s expecting Peacock viewership to reach at least 19 million — a significant jump from the record 13.6 million viewers who streamed the game on Tubi last year.

Accurate audience counts establish the foundation for proving performance throughout the buying process. That bedrock is necessary to connect every touchpoint.

Giving TV its full credit for measurement

In December, NBCU announced several new measurement tools, including the Performance Insights Hub and LIVE Total Impact, which they believe will completely transform how the company measures through the funnel.

Executives told reporters that proof of performance has become the single biggest factor influencing buying and planning decisions.

The Performance Insights Hub promises to close the lag between airing an ad and understanding its impact. Buyers will be able to optimize in real time rather than waiting six to eight weeks for reporting. NBCU executives believe premium video hasn’t gotten the credit it deserves, so they’re prioritizing faster measurement that shows results.

This dovetails into LIVE Total Impact, which NBCU describes as the industry’s first cross-platform tool that can carry audiences and retarget them in future programming. A select group of advertisers is using Total Impact for the Super Bowl and the Olympics.

This cross-event strategy is another part of NBCU’s core strategy. For the first time, the company sold ad inventory for the Super Bowl and the Olympics together. In the past, both events ran in parallel and even competed, according to NBCU’s chairman of global advertising of partnerships, Mark Marshall.

“Some of these people spend $8 million on a piece of creative and run it once in the Super Bowl,” Marshall said on The Varsity podcast. “Our pitch to them was why don’t you use that entire two-week period to really extend the reach of what your message is going to be.”

Marshall said advertisers who only buy the Olympics miss out on 30 million people watching the Super Bowl, and the same for buyers who only activate during the Super Bowl.

About 40% of brands will advertise in both the Super Bowl and the Olympics, according to Marshall. What surprised him most about this strategy was “that we hadn’t done it prior.”

Tracking beyond one $10 million ad

Of course, Super Bowl ads have long since evolved beyond a single 30- or 60-second spot. For years, they’ve been multipronged, omnichannel experiences. The new wrinkle this year is buyers pushing more into AI for media planning and reporting.

As advertisers push for momentum with their Super Bowl campaigns, TransUnion’s Matt Spiegel argues that a solid data foundation is necessary to fully deliver.

“If you’re going to spend all that money to have that watercooler moment, [and] you follow that up with highly targeted creative in streaming channels and web channels, then you’re actually going to massively improve the ROI of your big investment,” Spiegel, the company’s executive vice president of digital marketing solutions, told The Current.

That level of sophistication is critical for any marketer, especially in TV or streaming, where buyers are expected to show clear links between exposure and outcomes.

“Advertisers are much further along than they used to be when it comes to tying Super Bowl ads back to outcomes,” Lucas Bertrand, CEO and founder of Looper Insights, told The Current. “The Super Bowl remains unmatched in scale and cultural impact. What’s changed is that advertisers now expect both. They want the brand lift, but they also want clearer signals around engagement, follow-on viewing and how that attention carries beyond game day.”