Super Bowl Ads Affect Other Sports Seasons.

• Position: YOUR LIFE

The benefits from Super Bowl ads--a 30-second TV commercial for the big game was priced at more than $4,000,000-persist well into the year, with increased sales during sporting events like the NCAA's "March Madness," NBA playoffs, and Major League Baseball games, according to a study coauthored by researchers from Stanford (Calif.) University and published in Marketing Science.

The authors explore the relationship between Super Bowl viewership across the top 56 advertising markets within the U.S. and corresponding sales in these markets for advertised brands throughout the year. In particular, they study the beer and soda categories, where there is ongoing consumption.

A challenge in measuring the gains from these ads is that most advertisers typically advertise on the Super Bowl every year, so one cannot directly measure how sales change. The authors cleverly exploit the variation in the level of viewership across markets as a function of the popularity of the teams playing in the Super Bowl to isolate the sales effects of ads.

They explain: "Our strategy is pretty intuitive. When the San Francisco 49ers returned to the Super Bowl in 2013 after many years, viewership in San Francisco and cities with large numbers of 49ers fans increases. If the ads are effective, then we should see a greater increase in advertisers'...