Super Bowl Time-Shifted in 07: Starcom Analysis

Almost two-thirds of TiVo users time-shifted throughout the Super Bowl live game last year which was broadcasted on CBS, according to media agency Starcom, dismissing notions that live sports are TiVo-proof.

Starcom analyzed TNS and TiVo data, including second-by-second data from from TiVo's 20,000-home Stop Watch panel and from 300,000 Charter cable subscribers in the Los Angeles area. Starcom also noted that most of the time-shifting occurred within an hour and said that time-shifted viewing of commercials added nearly one-third more ratings points.

This was still good news for advertisers, as majority of viewers did not use their DVRs to skip ads, but used it to pause the broadcast, or rewind it and re-watch the game, or ads. Starcom also noted that Super Bowl lost only 1 percent of viewers when the commercials come on, compared with 10 percent or more for an average TV show.

According to the Starcom analysis, the advertisers who benefited the most from time-shifted viewing of their commercials were Chevrolet, which got 31 percent more viewership of its commercial when the time-shifted audience was added; Doritos, which got 30 percent more audience; two Bud Light commercials which got 28 and 27 percent more viewing; a FedEx commercial which got 27 percent more viewing; Nationwide Insurance, which got 25 percent more audience; CareerBuilder.com, which got 24 percent more; a Budweiser spot and another Bud Light spot, which got 23 and 22 percent, respectively, more viewership; and a General Motors add, which attracted 21 percent more viewers.

Starcom also reported that most of the viewers watched the Super Bowl halftime show on CBS. Almost 94 percent of the Super Bowl viewership stayed glued to CBS five minutes prior to halftime to watch the halftime show. For those viewers who left, most went to Nickelodeon, Cartoon Network, Boomerang, Disney Channel, TNT or TBS.

The Super Bowl, airing on Fox on this Sunday, is always a big event for advertisers, who start buying spots as early as March last year. For the 2008 game they went especially fast, said Neil Mulcahy, executive vice president of advertising sales for Fox.

The most-expensive 30-second ads sold for $3 million (the average is $2.7 million), up 15 percent from $2.6 million last year. Last year's top prices were up just 4 percent from 2006.