Every Super Bowl ad to be live-streamed with game next year

Variety reports that next year, event broadcaster CBS will be giving advertisers no choice – every ad will be live-streamed.

CBS will require clients to opt-in to live-streaming when selling its advertising package, Variety noted.

For the first time ever, Super Bowl ads will simultaneously be shown as television spots as well as live-stream commercials on the web.

Super Bowl 50 will be the first you can catch – commercials and all – entirely on your desktop, laptop, tablet or smartphone. “They are not going to let people opt out [of live-streaming]”. The game was watched by 114.4 million people. For Super Bowl XLIX, 18 of NBC’s 70 advertisers also bought commercials for the online live-stream.

However, the article reported that Les Moonves, CBS chief executive, said during a quarterly earnings call that month that his sales team would bring in at least $5 million for a 30-second spot for the 2016 game. But CBS’ big Super Bowl livestreaming move is the latest indication of streaming’s increasing importance to the NFL, its fans and advertisers.

NBC’s live stream of 2015 game averaged 800,000 viewers, up from 528,000 when the game aired on Fox in 2014, and peaking at 1.3 million simultaneous viewers. But that does not include an additional fee that will be charged for inventory in the live stream, according to a person familiar with the situation. Those numbers can dramatically rise if online viewers can also see commercials.

Next February, viewers are bound to have laptops and tablets on, tuned into CBS, along with their televisions for Super Bowl 50. That would mean Super Bowl ads would reach yet another record, after NBC asked for between $4.4 million and $4.5 million for a 30-second spot previous year.