Streaming-only Super Bowl ads gain traction on NBC’s Peacock

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 way to 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…