Are Super Bowl ads really worth the money?

>>>View this year’s already-buzzed about Super Bowl commercials

The going price of a commercial spot during Super Bowl XLVIII? $4 million. But for companies trying to sell more product, is that much exposure, for that price, worth it?

Chris Hill of the Motely Fool says if a business is looking to sell more of what they have, then a Super Bowl ad won’t likely won’t do the trick.

“I think in some cases, it is worth the money if you’re one of the bigger companies,” Hill tells the Morning News on KIRO Radio, citing companies like Pepsi and Budweiser. “(Those companies) don’t need to spend money on advertising because we already know about them, but rather their choice to advertise on the Super Bowl is just to reinforce that brand. They’re not necessarily looking to reinforce sales.”

For the smaller companies, it’s just not worth it. Hill remembers the Super Bowl ads for Pets.com and other .com businesses. It turns out that’s all they got was buzz that didn’t turn into sales numbers.

This year, from lesser-known SodaStream, a commercial that features Scarlett Johansson, is likely to get a lot of attention. However, he says it will be interesting to see if it actually does anything for SodaStream sales.

The real winners aren’t the advertisers who are spending millions to make the ad, more millions to promote it, and another $4 million for ad time on their commercial during the big game.

The winners instead are the channels airing the Super Bowl – Fox, and Google, who owns YouTube and who will run a 5-10 second pre-roll commercial in front of the commercial people have logged in to watch.

“Fox is going to collect all the money, but you also have to figure that Google is the winner here because the ads that really gain popularity are going to be watched millions and millions of times on YouTube.”