The wrong stat

Superbowl commercials are inefficient, or so says Slate: you can reach more viewers at a lower price advertising on other shows. I see at least two problems with this analysis, in addition to what Rojas says. First, it's not just how many viewers, it's also who the viewers are. I suspect Superbowl demographics are better than average. Second, most of the time people don't pay much attention to ads, but they do while watching the Superbowl; a lot of people watch for the ads, thus each viewer is more valuable than on the average show. I don't how if these factors make Superbowl ads the right decision or not at their current prices, but they are non-trivial.