CTV and CBS sell out Super Bowl commercial time
February 2, 2010 · 6 Comments
Both CBS and CTV have sold the full amount of their advertising time for Sunday’s Super Bowl, sources reported today.
CTV sold out its ad inventory last week, although it held back several 30 second spots for network promotions, specifically for the Vancouver Olympics.
If a company contacted CTV this week and offered to purchase a Super Bowl ad, CTV would be able to sell one of its in-house spots.
Sources say CTV discounted Super Bowl commercials by 5 to 10 per cent from last year’s price of $110,000.
In the United States, CBS announced this week that it had sold its Super Bowl ad inventory, which was fetching $2.5-million to $3-million for a 30 second spot.
At this point last year, NBC, hit hard by the economic recession, had not sold out its Super Bowl ad time.
Advertisers were drawn to this NFL championship game because of the large audience increases produced in the NFL regular season and playoffs.
What’s more, the telecast has the marquee attraction of Peyton Manning of the Indianapolis Colts, the top quarterback in the NFL, participating in the game (Colts-New Orleans Saints).
When CBS last week accepted the controversial anti-abortion ad by the social conservative group Focus on the Family, it was assumed the network was desperate for the $2.5-million ad fee.
Given that sales were brisk, that wasn’t the case. CBS, instead, simply made a poor decision by favouring one pressure group’s agenda over another.
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Focus on the Family is a political lobby group and, while CBS is within their rights to air the ad without any countering point of view, this is a poor decision for a network that broadcasts over the air to the whole country. A better policy would be to exclude advocacy adverts.
As it turns out, abortion was illegal and highly punishable in the Philippines at the time so it is highly unlikely that any doctor advised Ms. Tebow to have one. The ad should be labelled as a dramatization to avoid charges of false advertising.
I agree that excluding advocacy advertising is probably best practise for public broadcasting, unless you grant complete freedom of speech rights and let any reasonable and rational activist groups pay for ad space as well. I suppose the issue is where to draw the line if you open it up to complete speech.
I may be wrong, but did PETA not get turned down for Super Bowl advertising a few years ago when the Micheal Vick- Dog Fighting scandal was news?
The PETA ad was overtly sexual and over the top like all of their stunts are. PETA knew it would never be accepted by the standards people at NBC and that was the plan all along, they just wanted the free attention that came with the rejection.
But I have to wonder why the far left is so afraid of this ad that they'll go to any lengths to try to ban or discredit it. All they're doing is bringing more attention to the cause and when it airs, I'll bet 90% of the viewers will go "that's it!! That's what the abortion people were so upset about?? what was so bad about it"
"Focus on the Family is a political lobby group and, while CBS is within their rights to air the ad without any countering point of view…"
Aren't all the party-hard beer ads and racy GoDaddy.com ads already presenting the countering point of view?!
Mike, well said.
It seems the biggest opponents aren’t the pro-choice folks but the pro-gay crowd which really hates this focus on the family group. At least that’s the impression I’m getting from Mike_K anyway