In 1967 the cost for a 30-second spot in Super Bowl I was $42,500 on CBS and $37,500 on NBC. This past Sunday, CBS was asking $2.6 million.

However much money that may seem, you’ve got to think about what they’re selling: lots and lots of eyeballs. If you watched the Super Bowl this year, it’s more likely that you watched the commercials in rapture and then took bathroom breaks during the game. This is because Super Bowl commercials are usually more entertaining than the game (and arguably more anticipated too). Hulu, for example, now features a special Super Bowl commercial re-cap on their site (producing an interesting phenomenon… watching a short commercial to then watch another commercial — see above). To further make my point, there's nothing even close to comparable if fans wanted to re-watch segments of the Super Bowl game...

This past Sunday, a Doritos commercial featuring two men attacked in a gym for stealing someone else’s Doritos was seen by an estimated 116.2 million viewers, making it the most watched television commercial of all time. Until Sunday, the season finale of M*A*S*H in 1983 aired the highest commercial minute, when an estimated 108.9 million viewers watched the second half hour of the program.

If 116 million people really watched the ad, then Doritos paid just north of .02 cents per viewer. Given all the post-show buzz, repeat views on Hulu and blog posts (yes, I'm contributing to this ridiculousness), $2.6 million starts to sound surprisingly reasonable…

n.b. Focus on the Family’s ad featuring Tim Tebow tied for the least viewed ad of Super Bowl XLIV, despite the heavy pre-game buzz going into the game.