Anheuser-Busch Pays $18 Million for 9 ads Super Bowl Sunday.
Posted by Scott Dunn on January 22, 2008
$18 million bucks for 9 beer commercials being aired over the course of 4 to 5 hours on a Sunday night. I know, I know…those guys at AB need to put down their beer steins and jump into reality. Or are they already in reality?
Let’s see. According to the boys at Nielsen Media Research, a reported 93 million viewers tuned in to watch last year’s Super Bowl making it the THIRD most-watched telecast behind only Super Bowl XXX and the M*A*S*H series finale. 93 million viewers…the stand-out television event of the year!
Now, down to the math. Let’s just say that of the 93 million viewers watching the Super Bowl one-third of them drink an occassional beer or two or three. (After all, a bottle of Opus One and wings do not sound enticing.) Now we have 31 million beer swilling, Super Bowl watching consumers. Talk about a qualified target market?? I am getting goose bumps just thinking about it.
If a third of those 31 million go out over the course of the year and buy one case of Bud or Bud Light that would be roughly 10 million cases of beer AB sells this year. A case of Bud or Bud Light runs somewhere in the $18.00 range. This means that AB generates over $180 million dollars in revenue over the course of the year. Not bad for an $18 million dollar investment.
The obvious lesson here is simple: know your target market and find advertising that reachs them. The not so obvious lesson has to do with the time value of money. How many cases of Bud are sold in the month of February? Lastly, what is the time value of money for AB? Cash collected in February goes a long, long, long way to a strong balance sheet, expansion and a profitable year.
$18 Million doesn’t seem like such a bad investment after all. What investment are you making TODAY in your target market?
AB… if you guys are reading this, I am available to be a taste tester.
