Super returns to Super Bowl ads?
Stephens-Davidowitz first author, not Varian. An instrumental-variable study of 70 films advertised in the 2004 to 2014 Super Bowls across 56 media markets used the fact that slots are sold before the conference championships, so the home cities of qualifying teams gain about 8 percentage points more viewers. Read through, the advertising raised opening-weekend takings by roughly a fifth. Matched films that were not advertised showed no significant effect.
Stephens-Davidowitz first author, not Varian. An instrumental-variable study of 70 films advertised in the 2004 to 2014 Super Bowls across 56 media markets used the fact that slots are sold before the conference championships, so the home cities of qualifying teams gain about 8 percentage points more viewers. Read through, the advertising raised opening-weekend takings by roughly a fifth. Matched films that were not advertised showed no significant effect.
Written from the full text read 2026-10-18.
What our sources record
Recorded when this source was checked, figures included, with page references and quotation marks removed.
Stephens-Davidowitz, S., Varian, H., & Smith, M. D. (2017). Super returns to Super Bowl ads? Quantitative Marketing and Economics, 15(1), 1-28. doi:10.1007/s11129-016-9179-0.