Do 40% of the People Watch the Superbowl for the Ads?

"Super Bowl ads have become so big that 40% of the audience watching the game tunes in just for the ads," writes Phyllis Furman in today's Daily News.

Say what?!

That cannot be right. "In fact, only 9 percent of adults plan to watch the game just for the ads, and that number is down from last year's 14 percent and at its lowest level in eight years, according to a new report from Baltimore advertising firm Eisner Communications," writes A.J. Livsey in Media Life Magazine.

The interview continues: ?'This may be more of a reflection on the quality of the last few years of Super Bowl ads and the higher quality of advertising seen throughout the year than a reflection that the Super Bowl is a bad advertising investment,' says Eisner senior vice president David Blum."

Which reminds me of an interview I did years ago with Macromedia CEO Rob Burgess. I asked his whether or not he was planning on a Superbowl ad. He responded, with a hardly concealed laugh that he was the CEO of a publicly traded company and there was no way he could justify to his shareholders spending millions on a minute of ad time.

And as a media-obsessed blogger there is no way I can justify the practice of watching the Superbowl just to see the commercials.