Super Bowl LIII – The Big Spenders

Who’s on Top? – January 28-February 3, 2019

With Super Bowl LIII on the calendar, the week culminating with the big game is the biggest week in advertising. Indeed, it’s no surprise that national TV ad spend saw a spike during this period with total expenditures increasing by 56% week over week to reach $1.5 billion, while new spend more than quadrupled, reaching $548 million. As the mainstage for releasing new commercials, in-game Super Bowl ads were responsible for 70% of all new ad spend this week, generating $382 million in revenue.

Creative Spotlight

The top five advertisers for the week all released multiple creatives during Super Bowl LIII.

Budweiser ranked number one with four ads making up two minutes of ad time promoting the new ingredients label on Bud Light, part of a campaign featuring the Bud Knight which launched in early January. Another :45 seconds of air time was dedicated to a corporate promo with the ever-beloved Budweiser Clydesdales. Budweiser’s parent company AB-In Bev was also the leading advertiser during the big game with $59 million of expenditures.

Amazon was the runner up for spend, airing a :90 second spot for Amazon Alexa and a :60 second spot Hanna, a new series on Amazon Prime.

T-Mobile, Toyota and Google all tied for third place in Super Bowl spending – each investing $20 million.

T-Mobile aired four :30 second spots, featuring humorous, and sometimes unfortunate, text message threads.

Toyota promoted its Rav4 and Supra models in two :60 second spots.

This data is part of ongoing reporting we release on a weekly basis. Make sure to check back every week for the most recent data, or contact us to learn how you can discover your competitors’ breaking ads on your own in real–time using our AdScope tool.  Already an AdScope customer? Log in now and see what your competitors are up to.