There’s a long-standing belief in marketing that Super Bowl ads are too expensive to justify. But a recent tweet from Zacharia Reitano, co-founder and CEO of Ro, reframes this narrative by walking through the real economics of placing an ad during the game.
Key highlights
A 30-second spot during the Super Bowl still costs millions of dollars, with estimates often starting at $7-10 million just for the airtime. But Reitano breaks down the full cost—production, celebrity talent, mandatory additional media buys, and follow-up campaigns—which can push the total ad investment far higher.
His core argument isn’t blind optimism. It’s a calculation about shared attention. During the Super Bowl, hundreds of millions of people are watching the same thing at the same time—no scrolling, no skipping, no feed algorithm fragments. For a brand trying to break through awareness barriers, this concentrated attention is extremely rare in today’s fragmented media landscape.
Reitano also views the investment as a portfolio decision with asymmetric risk. If the ad doesn’t move the needle immediately, the downside is contained to a known spend. But if it ignites broader conversations, brand recall, and future acquisition efficiencies, the payoff spreads far beyond the moment itself.
What this means for a marketer
For marketers, the lesson is about strategic trade-offs. Super Bowl ads are not about immediate conversions alone—they are about shared cultural moments and permission to be part of the mainstream conversation. In an era where attention is dispersed across platforms and feeds, capturing a unified audience—even momentarily—can have ripple effects on brand perception, search demand, and downstream performance.
This doesn’t imply every brand should chase big game slots like even during IPL. But it does reinforce a truth we often overlook: not all impressions are created equal. When the audience is truly aligned, the platform becomes a catalyst, not a cost center, but then there is also overdoing it with showing the same ad too many times but that’s where CRED has aced the Ad Game.
