Thinking about this during tonight’s World Series, but let’s put it on the bigger scale of the Super Bowl for the sake of discussion.
It seems to me that ‘x’ number of companies, pay ‘x’ number of dollars, for their commercials to run ‘x’ number of times during the game. Well since there’s no way to predict how many stoppages in play there will be, or whether or not the game will go into OT (or extra innings), is there a “settling up” process in the days afterwards?
Something along the lines of Budweiser going back to FOX and demanding a partial refund because their 5th commercial never got aired towards the end of the game? Or perhaps FOX getting to go back to Budweiser and saying “hey, the game went into 17 innings, so we re-ran that talking-frog one a second time – you owe us $2.1 mil”?
Yes. You settle up afterwards. It’s as simple as that. And nobody has to pay for commercials that weren’t run, or were run but not contracted for. The actual contracts can be much more complicated and include every possible variation, but it’s like any other deal, you get what you pay for, and you don’t pay for what you don’t get.
The normal process is called “make good.” Remember, advertisers are not specifically buying “the Super Bowl,” they’re buying a guarantee that their commercial will reach X million viewers of Y demographic.
If your commercial doesn’t run, or if it runs in the 4th quarter of a boring game that everyone turned off at halftime, the network will arrange to run your make goods in some sequence that will give you the viewers and demographics you contracted for.
And, IIRC, when you buy the commercial time, the network asks you if you want to run an extra slot if one opens up at the last minute, so that’s all worked out in advance.
All commercials sold will air. The game will be stopped numerous times for commercial timeouts along with the other games stoppages. Most commercial time outs happen during change of possessions so they appear seamless to the flow of the game but if required, the network will ask for and receive a break in play just for the purpose of airing a commercial or two.
This is not true. While it is generally true that advertisers don’t buy specific shows or times, for big events like the Super Bowl, World Series, etc., slots are sold for the event itself. The Super Bowl in particular has become a venue for companies to kick off new campaigns or “impact” ads.
Live events, like sports, awards shows, concerts, and so forth, present special challenges for broadcasters. A network may allot three hours for the Super Bowl, for example. It won’t cut away from the game to air its late-night programming, but it can’t guarantee that the game will go over the three hours allotted to it. What it does is sell the ad time for a hypothetical fourth hour at a deep discount with the understanding that the ad may not air. I worked at a radio station that broadcast local high school sports that ran into this problem regularly. The program director would allot two hours for each game, but the ad sales staff would sell ads for a hypothetical third hour even though most games ended before the two hours were up. The station did the discount thing, but if the ads didn’t air, the advertiser would get that money credited toward commercial time either during a future game or a timeslot with comparable ratings. The advertiser got the ads aired, the station got to keep the money, and everyone was happy.
In particular before past Super Bowls, I remember seeing articles discussing which ads will be shown when. So that Ford might buy a commercial for between the first two quarters, and Pepsi might buy one for after the third quarter, knowing that if the game is a blow-out some of the audience will have turned off the TV early.