CBS said it has sold out of commercial slots for the Super Bowl, a full week before the biggest ad event of the year.
The TV network that airs the game typically has a handful of spots left to sell at this point, and CBS’s status is even more surprising given that two of the game’s biggest advertisers, Pepsi and General Motors, decided to sit out this year’s game.
Stung by reports that ad rates are down for this year’s Super Bowl, CBS insisted that pricing is actually up compared with 2009. Despite the recession, the network said it sold spots that topped the $3 million high mark set last year by NBC. Jo Ann Ross, president of network sales for CBS, said it is easier to sell into a recovery than into a recession.
“We’re confident that our average price is higher than a year ago and our highest price is higher than a year ago,” Ross told The Post.
Although CBS declined to say how much it was charging for ad slots, ad buyers estimate the average cost of a single 30-second spot ranged from $2.5 million to $2.8 million. CBS sold more than 60 ad slots for the Feb. 7 game.
Last year, NBC made a big show of being able to price ad time at more than $3 million for a single spot. However, those ads were sold in the spring, before the economy hit rock bottom.
NBC had a tougher time selling its remaining slots as the game approached, and there is little doubt that those last-minute deals were made for far less than the $3 million asking price.
Moreover, NBC set aside five minutes of free commercial time last year to plug parent company General Electric and Hulu, the online venture it owns along with News Corp. and Disney. (News Corp. also owns the Post.)
With the economy still recovering from a severe ad slump, CBS said it started reaching out to advertisers earlier than usual and cast a wider net in search of newcomers.
That roster of freshman players is relatively long compared with previous years and includes Skechers shoes, Dockers pants, Dr. Pepper, HomeAway vacation rentals, text-message information service kgb, and Boost Mobile and Qualcomm’s mobile TV service, Flo TV.
CBS said there is another first-timer whose name has not yet been released.
The network last week spurned an ad from gay dating site ManCrunch.