The following is a guest post by Jason Hershman, founder and part-time CFO of Point, and the views expressed are solely those of the author.

Every year during the Super Bowl, CFOs face the same scenario: the CMO walks in and asks, "Can you approve an $8 million marketing spend? It will be gone in 30 seconds."

We've all heard similar proposals countless times. CMOs wave around studies on impressions, social media mentions, and "brand lift," and these studies always seem to prove the money was well spent.

Interestingly, these studies never conclude, "We burned $8 million."

And,$8 million is just the entry fee. That's NBC's asking price for a single 30-second spot during Super Bowl LX, with some premium slots exceeding $10 million. But once you add in creative production, celebrity endorsements, legal fees, and the inevitable digital marketing campaigns needed post-game to convert those eyeballs into actual revenue on the P&L, total investment typically lands between $15 million and $50 million—for just 30 seconds of airtime.

I've approved full go-to-market strategies for far less than that, and every dollar was fought for.

The New England Patriots and Seattle Seahawks kick off on February 8th, and I don't care which ad "wins the Super Bowl." What I care about is whether the numbers still hold up after the confetti is swept away.

The "All-In" Cost: Why $8 Million Is Just the Entry Fee

As someone who has served as CFO in sports production and supported client campaigns from the finance side, I can tell you: add 50% to the production costs your marketing team presents, and you'll be closer to the real number.

For Super Bowl ads,the media buy is the headline number: $7-8 million for 30 seconds. But agency and production fees alone add another $3-6 million, and that's before celebrity appearances or high-cost shoots.

Next comes the part everyone conveniently ignores: 360-degree activation spend. This includes social media, influencer marketing, retail media, paid search, retargeting, landing pages, CRM, and promotional funding. NBCU says digital investment around the Super Bowlgrew 20% compared to the last Super Bowl NBC broadcast, because no brand runs a Super Bowl ad in isolation these days.

So, before I sign anything, I demand answers to the following four questions:

  1. What's the total authorized amount, not just the media cost?
  2. If demand spikes, what are our operational constraints (inventory, call center capacity, app stability)?
  3. What payback period are we underwriting: two weeks, eight weeks, or 12 months?
  4. If the ad becomes a viral meme but sales don't move, what's Plan B?

Treat the Super Bowl like a capital project. Give it a budget, an owner, and a minimum return rate, not just a gut feeling.

What Are You Really Buying? Reach, Attention, and "Intent Velocity"

Marketers tend to overestimate this part, and CFOs underestimate it. The truth lies somewhere in between.

Super Bowl LIXaveraged 127.7 million viewersand reached 191.1 million across platforms. Using a $7.5 million spot for rough math, that's about a $59 CPM for average viewers and about a $39 CPM for total reach. For live, simultaneous, high-focus attention, that's not unreasonable.

What's truly interesting is the intent surge. EDO found that a single Super Bowl ad generates brand search engagementequivalent to 1,056 primetime ads。

in one ad.

That compression ratio alone is worth attention. But here's the issue:last year, 57 advertisers ran 63 ads during the game, each chasing the same surge. So, the Super Bowl does deliver real attention, but attention and revenue aren't the same line item, and the distance between them is where most marketing campaigns quietly fail.

The Truth About Ad ROI: The Break-Even Calculation

Attention is real, and intent surges are measurable. Great. Now prove it was worth the money.

If you want a clean ROAS story, the Super Bowl might not be your choice. But if you want a strategic story, you have to calculate the numbers honestly. Here's how:

Step One: Define the True Investment

The first trick in a Super Bowl budget proposal is the number on the cover page. It'll say $8 million, because that's the media buy cost—big enough to show ambition without panicking finance. But it won't include the $3-6 million in agency and production costs, activation spend, and the digital campaigns needed for weeks after the game.

For most brands, a conservative all-in figure is around $13 million. But many brands exceed $25 million before they even retarget a single viewer.

So step one is simple: drop the illusion that "the media buy is the budget." That's just the down payment.

Step Two: Define Returns Like a CFO, Not a Marketer

This is where the conversation usually breaks down.

Marketing will bring out impressions, social media mentions, and my favorite, "earned media value"—a fictional metric Wall Street dislikes the most. None of that counts.

The only number that matters is incremental contribution profit: revenue that wouldn't have occurred without the campaign, minus fulfillment costs.

You need to stress-test it. How much of that surge is cannibalized from other channels? How much profit are you burning through "activating" the moment with promotional funds? How much demand is just pulled forward from Q2? These aren't "gotcha questions"—they're the key to distinguishing a campaign that truly worked from one that merely "felt" like it worked.

Step Three: Do the Break-Even Math and Let It Humble You

Now, here's the part that quiets the room. At a 40% contribution margin, your $13 million all-in bet needs $32.5 million in incremental revenue to break even. At a 20% margin, that number doubles to $65 million. If your average order value is $50 and you keep $20 per order, you need 650,000 incremental orders directly attributed to the campaign.

Not total orders that week—incremental orders.

Fox viewed last year's Super Bowl asa driver of 65% growth in quarterly ad revenue, pulling in about $800 million from that single game. Advertiser demand is clearly still strong. But advertiser demand and your brand's payback period are two entirely different spreadsheets, and confusing them is exactly why CFOs can't explain their approval decisions to the board eight weeks later.

Measurement Methods That Won't Embarrass You Before the Audit Committee

You've done the break-even math, and it was humbling. Now you need to prove whether the spend actually drove performance.

Start with one primary KPI: incremental contribution profit, with an agreed-upon payback window. Not impressions, not earned media value—but profit that wouldn't have existed without the campaign. Then add leading indicators that support that number: brand search lift, direct traffic, app installs, retailer add-to-cart rates. These metrics alone can't prove ROI, but they'll tell you within 48 hours whether the ad generated real demand or just applause.

The harder part is separating what the Super Bowl drove from what would have happened anyway. Geo holdout tests can solve this. Choose matched markets, suppress spend in the control group, and compare lift over two to six weeks. Stagger paid search and retail media buys to separate organic demand from the spend you layered on top.

Another thing finance teams often overlook is operational readiness. If your website crashes under the traffic surge or your warehouse can't fulfill orders, none of this matters. A stockout in the week after the Super Bowl turns a successful ad into negative ROAS.EDO's datashows these ads reliably outperform average primetime in mid-funnel intent. The signal will be there; the only question is whether your backend is ready to convert it.

Opportunity Cost: What Else $8 Million Buys (and Why That Argument Is Both Right and Wrong)

Every CFO I know has the same instinct when a Super Bowl proposal hits the desk: "What else could we do with this money?" Good question, but it's an incomplete one.

The data is real. According toDigiday's 2025 analysis, the same $8 million could buy approximately:

  • 1.35 billion TikTok impressions
  • 1.6 billion Instagram Reels impressions
  • 10 million Walmart Connect clicks

On pure volume, the Super Bowl loses every time. If your product already performs well on performance channels, spending $8 million on 30 seconds of awareness is an expensive way to do what your media team could do with their eyes closed.

But performance channels can't build trust overnight, can't get retailers to give you shelf placement, and can't convince skeptical consumers to try a category they've never considered. Some brands need a moment that redefines market perception, and the Super Bowl remains one of the few stages that can do that in a single night.

So, what's the honest answer on opportunity cost? Both sides are right.

The CFO who instinctively says "no" is giving up strategic upside. The CMO who can't explain why it's better than the alternatives shouldn't spend the money. Your job is to determine which problem the company is trying to solve and fund the option that solves it in the most accountable way.

The Final Whistle: Was It Worth It?

For CFOs, evaluating Super Bowl ROAS is a bit like watching the Puppy Bowl: everyone's smiling, emotions are high, and by the end you're not sure what you watched—yet you're still expected to agree it was a success.

So let me be clear: if you operate like a CFO, Super Bowl advertising can be worth it. But if you let your marketing team treat it like a trophy, it won't be.

I'm not here to tell you the Super Bowl is a bad buy. I'm here to tell you it's a dangerous buy when no one in the room is asking tough questions.

ROAS can work for brands with high margins, strong LTV, the operational capacity to capture demand surges, and a full-funnel plan to turn 30 seconds into six months of revenue. The problem is that description fits only about a third of the companies writing the check. The rest are paying for marketing's expensive dopamine hit and calling it strategy.

Your CMO will tell you the Super Bowl is worth it. That's their job. Your job is to make them prove it with real budgets, real payback periods, and a scoreboard that goes beyond retweets.

The Super Bowl rewards companies that plan like operators and punishes those that plan like fans.