The Super Bowl is prime real estate every year for advertisers eager to get their brands in front of millions of consumers at once. It’s also costly.
That’s why a small subset of ad space for streaming-only commercials is gaining traction and granting smaller brands time during TV’s biggest night of the year.
Comcast’s NBC broadcast network will air Super Bowl 60 this year, with the Seattle Seahawks and New England Patriots facing off from Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, California. NBC’s streaming service, Peacock, will simulcast the event. While streaming has generally become the overwhelmingly popular wayto consume content, the Super Bowl is still primarily watched via the broadcast network.
The streaming simulcast — gaining viewers each year — features certain ad spots earmarked only for that audience.
Streaming-only spots make up about 10% of the full ad inventory during the Super Bowl and cost about half of what a traditional TV commercial goes for, said Mark Marshall, NBC’s chairman of global advertising and partnerships.
“So cheaper, but still not cheap,” said Marshall. “And part of it is also you don’t have many of these spots, right? So I think people caught on to this trick over the past couple years, and it’s done really well in streaming. And as a result, a lot of people are lining up and wanting to do that.”
Each year the cost of the national ads for the Super Bowl breaks a record. NBC sold out of ad inventory for the Super Bowl, averaging $8 million per 30-second commercial, with between five and 10 ads selling for more than $10 million each, CNBC previously reported.
The streaming-only ads, which still appear nationally, fill the slots that would host regional commercials during the traditional TV broadcast.
These spots bring in new advertisers outside of the mainstays like Budweiser and Lay’s. All of the Peacock-only commercials this year are new advertisers to NBC’s Super Bowl slate, Marshall said. For example, cowboy boots brand Tecovas and family location safety app Life360 both bought streaming-only ad spots this year.
The chief marketing officers for both brands noted the impact of the Super Bowl — as well as steep cost — in explaining their decision to go all in on Peacock.
Tecovas CMO Krista Dalton in an email called the company’s debut via streaming “a deliberate choice,” allowing the brand to get the impact of the Super Bowl with “a highly engaged environment while staying disciplined with our investment.”
Life360 CMO Mike Zeman said via email, “Streaming is a great way for us to test what being integrated into such a monumental cultural moment can deliver to our brand and business. It allows us to reach a massive, highly engaged audience of modern, connected families with an ‘out of pocket’ investment that doesn’t break the bank or occupy too large a percentage of our overall marketing budget.”
Last year nearly 128 million viewers watched the Super Bowl on TV and via streaming, according to Nielsen.
While NBC has had a digital offering for its last four Super Bowl telecasts, Marshall said more advertisers have been vying for streaming space as the platform reached 44 million subscribers.
And fittingly, that growth has been driven largely by NBC’s push into live sports. This month NBC will air the Super Bowl and the Winter Olympics — which begin on Friday — along with the NBA All-Star game. It’s a live sports slate the company is billing as “Legendary February.”
“It’s obviously a huge year for NBC, and Peacock is more sold-out than usual. We’re seeing a lot of brands leaning in with Peacock,” said Doug Paladino of ad agency PMG.
Paladino noted brands have seen good results advertising during Sunday Night Football games that are simulcast on Peacock, particularly due to the audience targeting capabilities on streaming.
The streaming-only commercials can also be something of an on-ramp for burgeoning brands that want to get their foot in the door of the big game.
Last year, direct-to-consumer health startup Ro bought its first ad during the Super Bowl — on Fox’s streaming service Tubi.
“The results that they got out of the Super Bowl for what they paid were an order of magnitude above what the traditional spot is,” said Philip Inghelbrecht, CEO and co-founder of tech firm Tatari, which works with brands and advertisers and helped Ro land the 2025 streaming-only ad slot.
This year, Ro, which offers access to GLP-1 medications and telehealth appointments, ramped up its commitment to the Super Bowl and bought a spot in the traditional game broadcast on NBC. Tennis superstar Serena Williams will anchor the ad.
“Last year we dipped our toes into advertising in the Super Bowl through a buy on Tubi. It was a really attractive chance for us to really understand how our brand and our creative performed in that environment,” said Will Flaherty, senior vice president of growth at Ro.
Smaller brands have other more-affordable options to test the waters, too.
Manscaped, the men’s grooming company, decided to buy a spot before kickoff — a time slot less coveted than during the game itself, but still pricy — to push the next chapter of its business.
“Manscaped is a brand that has been around for a few years now, but we’re at this very important moment in our trajectory, which is a big push for products beyond the groin, which is our first claim to fame,” said Chief Marketing Officer Marcelo Kertesz. “We have something new to communicate to the world.”
“We know the spot itself is
just one piece of it, a very important and very expensive piece of it, but it does make sense for us to do that in this moment,” said Kertesz. “It’s a desire I would guess all brands, at some point, have to be on that stage.”
