The 2009 Super Bowl 43 between the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Arizona Cardinals will be held in Tampa, FL on February 1, 2009.  The television broadcast is on NBC at 6pm ET/5pm CT. 

Here’s a previous GP News & Notes post about why the Super Bowl is great for advertisers.

With Super Bowl Sunday just around the corner, Media Life Magazine has put together great information on what a media buyer needs to know about advertising in the Super Bowl.  From the Media Life Magazine story “Your Primer on Sunday’s Super Bowl“:

“According to various reports, the average 30-second spot for the game is a record $3 million, or 11 percent more than last year€™s $2.7 million on Fox.”

“Some advertisers, including (Memphis based) FedEx and General Motors, have pulled out of the game, fearing in part that spending scads of money on a one-off Super Bowl stunt will send the wrong message at a time when thousands are being laid off.”  Here is FedEx information previously posted on this site.

“The Super Bowl audience is an attentive one. Carat says audience retention during Super Bowl commercials is a remarkable 99.2 percent, making it by far the top sports event of the year in terms of ad views.”

“Dozens of sites now offer replays of the game€™s ads. Last year Pepsi€™s much-touted Justin Timberlake commercial drew an additional 1.3 million views on YouTube in the two days after the game, according to Nielsen, with Pepsi€™s Naomi Campbell Sobe ad drawing 399,000 more views, ranking first and second overall.”

“There€™s always much talk about Super Bowl viewership, which over the past five years has ranged from a record of 97.5 million last year to a low of 86.1 million in 2005, according to Nielsen.”

“For the past five years, overall female viewership for the game has risen, hitting 37.7 million women over the age of 18 last year. About 10.5 million of last year€™s Super Bowl viewers were black, while 7.5 million were Hispanics.”

The chart below shows the national Super Bowl television viewership and ratings of the last 21 Super Bowls from 1988 – 2008.