Connect with execs from Axios, The New York Times, Paramount and more.
Just in case you forgot who still wears the pants in the advertising world, it’s TV. According to USA Today, CBS has sold 90 percent of Super Bowl ads.
TV is still a shotgun-approach medium for advertisers, as they spray their messages in front of millions hoping to knock a few down. Digital, on the other hand, is sniper-oriented, targeting the right person at the right time with the right ad. Horizon’s David Campanelli says in the USA Today piece, “Put quite simply, [TV] works.”
Along with the TV buy, however, brands have figured out that the Super Bowl — and mega-events like the Oscars and March Madness — is a perfect storm of earned, owned and paid media. Commercial slots are falling between the $3.7 million and $3.8 million range, which is up slightly from last year’s $3.5 million spot on NBC. It’s good to be the king.
More in Media
WTF is SPUR’s publisher-run Content Telemetry Framework?
SPUR is publisher‑run and fixated on one thing: turning AI’s use of their content from opaque scraping into a transparent, usage‑based licensing system they control.
How streaming creators built a new broadcast blueprint at the World Cup
Livestreaming creators offer new ways to broadcast sports to diverse audiences; this 2026 FIFA World Cup may be the new blueprint for leagues
Media Briefing: Declared ‘good bots,’ mixed-use crawlers, gray scrapers – how AI accesses publisher content
The Cloudflare’s latest AI settings reshape how compliant crawlers behave, yet the biggest leakage for publisher content remains a gray scraping economy that doesn’t bother to play by those rules.