What really drives ROI for Super Bowl ads? The secrets and not-so-secrets of Super Bowl profitability

A Super Bowl ad is the most expensive ad placement a brand can buy. One 30-second game day commercial costs around $7-$8 million per slot.

But what a Super Bowl commercial demands in up-front costs, it often more than makes up for in unparalleled brand awareness, equity, engagement and product sales. 

The 2025 Super Bowl, which saw the Philadelphia Eagles beat out the Kansas City Chiefs, was watched by 127.7 million viewers in the United States — crowning it the most watched Super Bowl in history as well as the most popular TV program of all time in the U.S.

Wesley Hartmann, associate professor of marketing at Stanford Graduate School of Business and Daniel Klapper of Humboldt University in Berlin, estimated that Budweiser brings in $96 million from their Super Bowl ads — delivering them a return on investment (ROI) of 172%. 

In this post, I walk you through how to calculate and improve your Super Bowl ad ROI. 

Super Bowl commercial ROI measures the profitability of your investment: 

ROI = (Revenue from Ads - Cost of Ads) / Cost of Ads. 

Kantar reports that the average ROI for a Super Bowl ad is $4.60 for every dollar spent — with many brands racking up double-digit returns. 

But because a Super Bowl ad can have such a huge impact across metrics in both the short and long term, it’s important to look at ROI holistically. 

Metrics like return on ad spend (ROAS) and brand lift can give you a deeper look into your ad and campaign performance. 

To get a holistic view, use these metrics alongside ROI: 

• Return on ad spend: ROAS zeroes in on revenue generated from the media cost, giving you an insight into revenue efficiency. While ROI factors in all campaign costs (such as production), ROAS just measures the gross revenue generated for each dollar you spend on your ad placement. 

• Brand lift: Brand lift is a great metric for measuring how your commercial and wider campaign impacts brand perception among consumers — tracking things like brand awareness, engagement and intent. 

• Media efficiency: Use this metric to measure the cost-effectiveness of your ad delivery, for instance how much you had to spend in order to reach a specific number of consumers or drive a desired action such as the use of a game-day promo code. 

A holistic view encapsulates both short-term sales increases and long-term impact on brand health. 

Both during and immediately after the Super Bowl, track and measure increases in immediate gains like net profit and conversion-related actions like sign-ups on a dedicated landing page or app. 

In the long-term, you’ll also need to track the impact of uplift in brand awareness, engagement and equity to get deeper insights into how your ad and campaign have benefited your brand. Here, metrics like customer lifetime value (CLV), brand awareness and brand recall, as well as earned media placements are all metrics you can use to measure the long-term ROI of your Super Bowl campaign.

Beyond buying your ad slot, there are several other costs you need to factor in when budgeting for your Super Bowl ad. In our past post on how to buy a Super Bowl ad, we broke down the costs involved in creating an ad for the game:

• Ad production: High-quality production costs upwards of $1 million. Creative materials, equipment and labor all factor in. While post-production processes such as sound mixing, editing and adding additional visual effects can add an additional $1 million to your budget.

• Talent fees: 63% of Super Bowl ads for 2025 featured celebrities, a 13% jump from 2024. The average celebrity endorsement can cost millions of dollars. Mid-range stars cost around $1-3 million, while top-tier celebs cost upwards of $10 million.

• Intellectual property rights: If you want to secure the rights to use a specific IP, such as a movie scene (such as Hellman’s When Harry Met Sally Super Bowl commercial) costs will range from hundreds of thousands of dollars to millions.

• Amplification: Brands also need to invest in ad amplification. Amplification such as local OOH and online digital campaigns and teaser ads can add another $1 million to a brand's budgets.

• Post-game analytics: Measuring the success of your ad is also essential – helping you uncover which channels, ad elements and campaigns were most effective is key for improving your strategy moving forward. Calculate the cost of software, agency support and in-house resources. If you’re factoring in both agency and software support then you’re looking at costs ranging from $50,000-$500,000.

• Contingency budget: As we recommend in our linked post above, it’s also important to set aside 10–15% of your total budget for any unexpected costs that may come up, such as last-minute edits or additional labor. 

Total cost to make a Super Bowl ad, excluding the ad slot: $4.4 million—$10 million.

Which Super Bowl ads typically deliver the highest ROI? Let’s take a look at some of their essential elements. 

Creative quality and emotional resonance

Paul Dyson, founder of Accelero consulting, reports that the profitability multiplier of creative quality is 12x. This means that high-quality creative can generate 12 times the ROI than low-quality creative. We replicated these findings, observing that ads with strong creative effectiveness deliver a 30% greater ROI. 

Emotional-driven storytelling is a core aspect of creative effectiveness. 

As we explore in our past post on the impact of emotions in advertising, emotions are the foundation of many successful ads. Ads in the top quartile for emotional connection score in the 78th percentile on sales impact, compared to just the 41st percentile for other ads. 

Joy and surprise are two of the most powerful emotional factors in advertising. While 71% of watchers say that their favorite Super Bowl Ads are the ones that make them laugh. 

Many ads rely on emotion-stirring themes to make impactful, memorable ads. According to The University of Southern California, the most effective themes include: 

• Pride

• Love

• Achievement

• Empathy

• Friendships

• Loneliness 

• Memories or nostalgia 

Take Google's Loretta, which aired during the 2020 Super Bowl. The ad featured a man who uses Google Assistant to help remember his late wife — exploring their favorite memories together and all of his late wife’s quirks. The ad expertly layers love, pride and nostalgic sadness.

It was the most talked-about ad of the Super Bowl, racking up 121k mentions (13.14% of brand conversation) and over 62 million YouTube views by September 2020. 

Strong brand linkage and memorability

To generate long-term ROI, brands need to make sure their ad is memorable and that consumers connect their creative to their brand. 

Memorability and brand linkage are important for driving sales, generating a viral buzz, winning earned media and building long-term brand equity. 

The more advertisers for a particular segment advertise in the Super Bowl, the more common it is for consumers to confuse brands — misattributing creative to the wrong company. 

Clear and prominent branding is essential: feature your logo, use your brand colors and lean into signature taglines. 

Don't overlook branding across channels. Brands that consistently share their logo and branding across platforms increase their brand recognition by 45%. From user-generated-content to teaser ads, make sure your branding is clean, prominent and consistent. 

Nationwide reach and real-time cultural relevance

Super Bowl ads have become a cultural phenomenon in their own right. 

80% of viewers say they consistently watch every single Super Bowl ad. 

Some viewers even say their favorite thing about the Super Bowl is the commercials, with women being most likely to tune in for the ads: 

To maximize your ROI, you need to become part of the excitement in the run up to the Super Bowl. Your commercial should be highly anticipated — the high point of a month-long, omni-channel campaign that intrigues fans and drives engagement with teaser ads, social media content and contests and shareable memes and GIFs. 

Strong omnichannel amplification before and after the game

Your ad doesn’t exist in isolation. For your ad to drive a high ROI, you need to invest in both pre and post-game amplification across channels. 

Before the game, it’s important to invest in: 

• Teaser ads: Build intrigue and excitement with short teaser ads across social platforms. An analysis from Northbeam for last year’s Super Bowl found that campaigns that featured pre-game ads delivered a better ROI compared to ads that brands only ran on game day.

• PR: Featuring a celebrity in your ad? Make sure you share details with news outlets ahead of time.

• Contests and giveaways: User-generated content is as cost-effective as it is powerful when it comes to generating brand awareness and engagement before the game. 

Doritos' 2023 "Triangle Tryouts," for example, invited users to create their own triangle-inspired dance moves in anticipation for their Super Bowl commercial. The campaign generated over 13 billion hashtag views on TikTok, helping to create a huge buzz for the ad with consumers before the game.

Post-game, you want to tap into the excitement and increase in brand awareness, engagement and equity your ad created during the game. Focus on: 

• Building a dedicated landing page: During the game, you can include a dedicated QR code or CTA that directs people to an optimized landing page. Your page should feature your ad and guide people through the next stage in the customer journey. Many brands help drive ROI by sharing a time-limited Super Bowl discount for the product featured in their ad.

• Ad retargeting: Target people who engaged with your teaser ads.

Keep monitoring your metrics: Continue to track performance across channels — from social media mentions to traffic patterns and conversion rates to understand which elements of your campaign are performing best and helping to generate the most ROI.

"What’s important is that [ad] impact is measured over the long term. When our UK team measured the impact of a global football tournament campaign on brand performance, it found that the total ROI (both short-term and long-term) was much higher. The post-campaign impact accounted for about 40% of the total ROI. Without a comprehensive set of goals and the right measurement strategy, the campaign could be judged solely on one metric – such as short-term volume – which might lead to an inaccurate assessment of success or failure." - Yeimy Garcia, The Drum

To effectively measure the ROI of your Super Bowl ad and wider campaign, you need to factor in their impact on several different metrics. Use these as your guide: 

Brand lift and awareness metrics

“Even though a Super Bowl advertising campaign might not pay immediately in hard dollars and cents, if a business can afford to produce one of these stellar spots, they stand to earn new customers and build awareness on a scale unmatched by other outlets,” - Peter Koeppel, founder and president of marketing agency Koeppel Direct

Rather than commercials delivering immediate sales, The University of Minnesota found that online searches for a brand and product often spiked immediately after a Super Bowl game. After the 2022 game, Super Bowl advertisers reported a 22% increase in online and offline word-of-mouth the week following the game. 

To track brand awareness and brand lift: 

1. Run surveys: Run surveys before and after the game to understand how your ad and wider campaign impacted these key metrics. Survey respondents on: ad recall, purchase intent, memorability of specific ad elements (such as taglines or celebrity features) and increases in brand awareness. 

2. Track brand mentions: Use social listening tools such as SproutSocial or brand tracking tools to see what people are saying about your brand in the run up, during and after the game and to explore any shifts in brand and product sentiment. 

Search interest and digital engagement spikes

Monitor direct, organic and referral traffic to your website as soon as your pre-game campaign begins, while your ad airs and immediately after the game to understand the impact of your ad and wider campaign. 

Monitor social media engagement by tracking brand mentions and the use of campaign hashtags. Monitor your engagement rate across your main social media platforms to understand how your ad is resonating with consumers. 

Sales lift and Super Bowl-week conversions

The main measure of short-term ROI is the immediate sales lift you’ll typically see in the week following the game, while you’ll typically see the biggest increase in online searches during the game — you’ll generate most of your sales in the 7-10 days after the game (with sales tapering off slowly throughout the month). Embed unique QR and promo codes into your broadcast to make tracking easier. 

Earned media value and social conversation impact

It’s also important to track the monetary impact of any third-party endorsements and news coverage. Monitor mentions across media outlets including industry blogs, major publications and local news outlets. Review how often you’ve been featured, the reach of the publication and the sentiment. 

You can also monitor consumer conversations across platforms including brand-owned media channels such as social media, your blog, podcast and video channels. Also include online forums like Reddit, FootballsFuture and Quora. Just like with tracking brand reach and awareness, social listening tools can just support and centralize your tracking and analysis.

Let’s explore some of the main frameworks you can use for different types of ads. 

Performance-focused ads 

Performance-focused ads are ads that have a direct impact on your conversions, sales and immediate ROI. If you’re using ads with a dedicated CTA or promo or deal, then you can also track immediate ROI and return on ad spend (ROAS). For these ads, measure the direct sales lift within the first 48 hours after the game.

ROAS Formula:

Use ROAS to calculate how much direct revenue you’ve generated per dollar spent. 

ROAS = (Revenue Generated from the Campaign - Total Cost of the Campaign) / Total Cost of the Campaign

ROI Formula:

Track direct ROI generated in the immediate post-game window to understand immediate impact on sales. 

ROI = (Revenue Generated from the Campaign - Total Cost of the Campaign) / Total Cost of the Campaign * 100%

​Brand storytelling ads

Unlike performance-based ads that are all about direct impact, brand storytelling ads form a deeper emotional connection to your audience — helping to build brand awareness, engagement and equity over the long haul. As brand storytelling ads aren’t necessarily tied to a unique promo, deal or discount, their impact can be more diffuse and harder to measure, but just as impactful.

A great metric to measure the impact of your brand storytelling ads is scientific share of voice (SSoV). This metric helps you understand how often consumers are talking about your brand compared to your competitors:

SSoV (%) = (Your Brand Mentions/Total Market Mentions) x 100

A good complement to SSoV is engagement rate. If your ad and brand are getting shares, comments and likes online and also helping to generate user-generated content, that shows your ad has a strong emotional impact on your audience and is pushing them to engage and share their thoughts and feelings online.

Here’s your calculation: 

Engagement Rate (%) = (Total Engagements/Total Reach) × 100

Your engagement rate refers to the number of comments, likes, shares, clicks and saves connected to your ad, while your total reach calculates how many people saw that content. 

Hybrid spots with both emotional and conversion-driving elements

How do you measure hybrid spots that combine both emotional and conversion-driving elements? Use a blended approach to assess these ads. Track both immediate sales-related KPIs alongside brand equity KPIs, such as: 

Conversion rate + engagement rate 

Combine conversion rates (tracks direct conversion-driven ad impact) for unique Super Bowl promos or QR codes alongside your engagement rates (tracks: emotional impact) across social platforms. 

Ad recall + sentiment analysis + click-through rates 

Compare click-through rates for your optimized landing page against ad recall and brand sentiment. The first is your direct-sales metric, the second measures lasting ad impact and brand sentiment. 

Let’s take a look at the Super Bowl ads that have delivered some of the highest-ROI for brands. 

Community activation: Doritos’ Crash The Super Bowl 

Fan contests, social media challenges and competitions are all effective ways to tap into social connectivity and drive sales with social proof. Ads with user-generated content are up to 31% more memorable than those without. 79% of consumers say that user generated content (UGC) highly impacts their purchasing decisions. 

Doritos Crash The Super Bowl is the snack brand’s long-standing famous community activation in which fans are invited to create their own viral, Super Bowl-crash-worthy commercials — giving them the opportunity to win the $1 million prize. And its ability to engage fans is unmatched in Super Bowl history. 

The campaign is part of the brand's low-cost, long-tail strategy that helps them maximize their ROI from their 30-second game-day ad slot. 

As one of the most successful Super Bowl campaigns of all time, the campaign delivered exceptional sales lift. Following the brand’s very first campaign in 2007, Doritos saw a 12% increase in sales in January after airing the winning fan’s commercial.

The campaign directly lifted the company’s net worth from $1.5 billion to $2.2 billion — an impressive 31% jump.

Simplicity: Winning over fans and cutting production costs with Coinbase

With big-name celebs, top creative concepts and cinematic production — is simpler ever really better when it comes to Super Bowl commercials? Coinbase proved that it can be. 

The brand strategically differentiated itself from other brands during the 2022 Super Bowl with their 60-second spot, which featured a bouncing QR code — a throwback to the classic DVD screen saver. Fans could scan the code and sign-up for a promotional crypto exchange offer.

With such low production costs, the brand spent the majority of their $14 million budget on their ad slot and promo offer, helping them to maximize their ROI.

The ad excelled when it came to earned media. In the words of John Glenday over at The Drum, the ad broke the internet and was the most talked-about ad on social media during the game.

Let’s take a look at some of the most common Super Bowl ad mistakes that reduce ROI for brands. 

Lack of pre-game and post-game activation

As I cover above, your ad only generates as much ROI as the effort you put into your pre and post-game activation. Pre-game, teaser ads, social media contests and PR and media coverage are all essential to building anticipation for when your ad drops. Post-game, amplify the impact of your 30-second slot by:

• Uploading it across YouTube, your site and CTV. 

• Creating shareable content related to your commercial like GIFs, memes and short follow-up ads. 

• Enter consumers who opted in into a nurture sequence — you could feature thank-you emails, behind-the-scenes footage of your ad and additional promos to drive engagement. 

Creative that entertains but fails to build recall

Many Super Bowl ads rely on wit or celebrity to engage consumers and drive sales, but these approaches alone aren’t enough to take deeper roots in the memories of consumers. 

In particular, celebrity endorsements can lead to the vampire or overshadowing effect, Marketer Robin Evans shares: “The use of celebrities, if they don't have a distinct and specific relationship to the product they are advertising, tends to produce the ‘vampire effect’: they suck the life-blood of the product dry; the audience remembers the celebrity but not the product.”

Emotion-driven storytelling and repetition are two core ingredients for boosting long-term ad and brand recall for consumers. Beyond quick humor, suspense or surprise, emotion-driven storytelling is a key approach that helps consumers to engage with more deeply and recall it later. In fact, emotion-driven storytelling can make something up to 22 times more memorable than facts alone. 

“Emotion is the Anchor. Studies in psychology show that emotional experiences are stored in the brain longer and with greater detail than neutral ones. This is why ads that make you laugh, cry, or feel nostalgic are far more effective than those that simply state facts. The stronger the emotional pull, the stronger the recall.” - Hammerhead Global

Repetition is also essential for ad memorability. The more we are exposed to an idea, the more we identify with it, like it and remember it later. Take online ads, researchers found people needed at least three exposures to digital ads to markedly lift brand awareness. That means your pre-teaser ads, alongside your pre and post-game activations, are just as important for consumers’ long-term recall and your ROI as your 30-second ad slot. 

Misalignment between creative idea and brand category entry points

When there's a misalignment between the creative idea and your Category Entry Points (CEPs), your ad may be engaging and memorable, but it will fail to increase sales at the moment of purchase. 

The main reason for this? Lack of brand linkage. 

20% of Super Bowl viewers say they can't recall which ad was connected to which brand. 

Make your brand signifiers prominent in your ad and across your campaign materials. Use distinctive brand assets (DBAs) including signature colors, characters, fonts, copy and music to help your brand register and improve recall for category buyers.

With Super Bowl commercials commanding millions of dollars for slots and production, you need a strong strategy that can help make sure you deliver the highest ROI. Celeb features, emotion-driven storytelling and strong pre and post-game activations are all important factors in commanding a high ROI come game day.