A Super Bowl LX sign is seen at the Civic Center Plaza in San Francisco, Friday, January 30, 2026.
Stephen Lam | Chronicle of San Francisco | Hearst Newspapers | Getty Images
The Super Bowl is a prime venue each year for advertisers wanting to showcase their brands to millions of consumers at once. It’s also expensive.
That’s why a small subset of ad space for streaming-only ads is gaining traction and giving smaller brands time during TV’s biggest night of the year.
Comcast Broadcast network NBC will broadcast Super Bowl 60 this year, with the Seattle Seahawks and New England Patriots facing off from Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, California. NBC’s streaming service, Peacock, will simulcast the event. While streaming has generally become the extremely popular way to consume content, the Super Bowl is still primarily watched via the broadcast network.
The streaming simulcast – which gains viewers every year – presents certain advertising spots reserved only for this audience.
Streaming-only spots make up about 10% of total ad inventory during the Super Bowl and cost about half what a traditional TV ad costs, said Mark Marshall, NBC’s president of global advertising and partnerships.
“So much cheaper, but still not cheap,” Marshall said. “And part of that is that you don’t have a lot of these spots, right? So I think people have figured out this trick over the last couple of years, and it’s worked really well on streaming. And as a result, a lot of people are lining up and wanting to do it.”
Every year, the cost of national Super Bowl ads breaks a record. NBC sold out its Super Bowl ad inventory, averaging $8 million per 30-second ad, with between five and 10 commercials selling for more than $10 million each, CNBC previously reported.
Streaming-only ads, which still air nationally, take up slots that would host regional ads during traditional broadcast television.
These spots attract new advertisers outside of mainstays like Budweiser and Lay’s. All of the ads booked for Peacock this year are new advertisers to NBC’s Super Bowl roster, Marshall said. For example, cowboy boot brand Tecovas and family location safety app Life360 both purchased streaming-only ad spots this year.
CMOs from both brands pointed to the impact of the Super Bowl — as well as high costs — in explaining their decision to go all-in on Peacock.
Krista Dalton, Tecovas’ chief marketing officer, called the company’s streaming debut a “deliberate choice” in an email, allowing the brand to benefit from the impact of the Super Bowl with “a highly engaged environment while remaining disciplined in our investment.”
Mike Zeman, Life360’s chief marketing officer, said via email: “Streaming is a great way for us to test what being part of such a monumental cultural moment can do for our brand and business.” This allows us to reach a massive, highly engaged audience of modern, connected families with a “direct” investment that doesn’t break the bank or take up too large a percentage of our overall marketing budget.
Last year, nearly 128 million viewers watched the Super Bowl on television and streaming, according to Nielsen.
As NBC offered a digital offering for its final four Super Bowl broadcasts, Marshall said more advertisers were competing for streaming space as the platform reached 44 million subscribers.
And rightly so, that growth has been largely driven by NBC’s rise into live sports. This month, NBC will broadcast the Super Bowl and the Winter Olympics – which begin Friday – as well as the NBA All-Star Game. It’s live sports programming that the company calls “Legendary February.”
“It’s obviously a huge year for NBC, and Peacock is fuller than usual. We’re seeing a lot of brands turning to Peacock,” said Doug Paladino of ad agency PMG.
Paladino noted that brands have seen strong advertising results during Sunday Night Football games simulcast on Peacock, particularly due to streaming audience targeting capabilities.
Streaming-only ads can also provide an on-ramp of sorts for burgeoning brands looking to get their foot in the door of the big game.
Last year, Ro, a direct-to-consumer health startup, purchased its first Super Bowl ad – the The fox Tubi streaming service.
“The results they got at the Super Bowl for what they paid were an order of magnitude better than what the traditional spot is,” said Philip Inghelbrecht, CEO and co-founder of technology company Tatari, which works with brands and advertisers and helped Ro land the 2025 streaming-only ad space.
This year, Ro, which provides access to GLP-1 medications and telehealth appointments, stepped up its involvement in the Super Bowl and purchased a spot in the traditional game broadcast on NBC. Tennis superstar Serena Williams will host the commercial.
“Last year we got into Super Bowl advertising by purchasing Tubi. It was a really exciting opportunity for us to really understand how our brand and our creativity performed in that environment,” said Will Flaherty, senior vice president of growth at Ro.
Smaller brands also have other, more affordable options to test the waters.
Manscaped, the men’s grooming company, decided to buy a spot before kickoff — a less coveted time slot than during the game itself, but still expensive — to push the next chapter of its business.
Manscaped Super Bowl LX campaign.
Courtesy: Manscaped
“Manscaped is a brand that has been around for a few years now, but we are at this very important moment in our trajectory, which is a big push for products beyond the groin, which is our first claim to fame,” said Marcelo Kertesz, chief marketing officer. “We have something new to communicate to the world.”
“We know that the place itself is
just one element, a very important and very expensive element, but it makes sense that we do it right now,” Kertesz said. “It’s a desire, I guess, that all brands, at some point, have to be on this stage.”