Super Bowl Ad Rates Thrown for a Loss

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Though still the priciest buy on tv at $2.5 million to $2.8 million for a 30-second ad, the Super Bowl, which airs Feb. 7 on CBS, has been victimized by the nation's faltering economy.

According to TNS Media Intelligence, the ad rates commanded by CBS this year fall short of the $3 million price tag for a 30-second spot that NBC netted when it broadcast the NFL championship game last year. Still, only 4 of 62 commercial slots remain unsold as of last week, though long-time advertisers, such as Pepsi and General Motors, took a pass on this year's broadcast, which is expected to attract 100 million viewers.

Traditionally, Super Bowl commercials often generate more excitement than the game itself, and enjoy a longer shelf life, courtesy of YouTube and other Web sites. Each year, roughly a quarter of the Super Bowl advertisers are new, according to TNS. Not counting pregame and postgame commercials, the 2009 Super Bowl generated $213 million in advertising revenue, TNS said.

The hard-working staff of "TUOL" always capitalizes on Super Bowl Sunday by dining out at near-empty restaurants and pondering when pitchers and catchers report to Spring Training.  Nevertheless, "TUOL" promises there will be hell to pay unless at least one high-priced commercial features chimpanzees.

'Can You Sue Me Now?'

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Misleading tv advertising lawsuits brought by telecommunications giants Verizon Wireless and AT&T against one another have been voluntarily dismissed, the Associated Press reports.

AT&T sued Verizon in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia in November over Verizon's "There's a Map for That" tv ad campaign (AT&T Mobility LLC v. Cellco Partnership, Case No. 09-cv-3057), but were unsuccessful in persuading the Court to pull the commercials, which AT&T claimed wrongly suggested its customers couldn't use their phones outside of 3G coverage areas.  Meanwhile, Verizon sued AT&T in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York last July (Verizon Wireless v. AT&T Mobility LLC, Case No. 09-cv-6656) seeking a ruling that its ad claims that it was "America's most reliable 3G network" were truthful and that AT&T's ads boasting "more bars in more places" were inaccurate.

Neither company commented on withdrawing their respective lawsuits, but apparently were in agreement that their back-and-forth dispute would not get "good reception" in a federal courtroom.

Now, a Program from Your Sponsor...

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As if prime-time programming on the big 4 networks isn't hard enough to sit through, now comes word from Advertising Age that "in-show" ads may soon be the norm.

The ads would run on the top or bottom of the screen during the program. Recently, ABC reported that 29 percent of viewers remembered an ad that appeared in the center of weather graphics, rather than during a commercial break. Likewise, a series of crawl ads along the bottom of the screen during NASCAR race coverage yielded positive results.

Product placement has long been a part of contemporary movies. Might be fun if the ads matched the programming, such as Coppertone sunscreen during "Gilligan's Island" or an ad for Magellan GPS systems during "Lost." It won't be long before we're counting down the seconds before acts of terrorism on "24" courtesy of the Seiko on Jack Bauer's wrist.