Super Bowl ad stats

With such a large captive audience, the Super Bowl has become not just pro football's biggest moment on center stage, but the advertising industry's as well. Anybody wanting to launch a national campaign puts up big cash -- $2.6 million for a 30 second spot this year -- and gets placement in the Super Bowl. It's a big swirling merry-go-round of ads. Over the past 20 years (1987-2006) there have been 221 different advertisers, more than 1,400 commercial announcements covering more than 11 hours and $1.72 billion of network advertising sales. This research by TNS Media Intelligence also shows that only two companies have placed ads in each of the last 20 years. Anheuser Busch has spent $250.8 million on Super Bowl ads in that time and Pepsi $190 million. General Motors is a distant third with an ad bill of $65.7 million over 15 years.