Super Bowl Hits Ratings Record

Super Bowl advertisers scored big last night as the Giants-Patriots match-up pulled a record 97.5 million viewers, besting the 1996 high of 94.1 million. "You could argue this might have been a perfect game from an advertising perspective,'' said a marketing analyst—who noted that the game's close score and slow pace "really put the focus on the commercials," Bloomberg reports.

Roughly 65% of households that had TVs on were tuned in to the game on Fox, which charged about $2.7 million per 30-second spot. The audience topped at 105.7 million viewers between 9:30 p.m. and 10 p.m. Eastern Time, just short of the all-time telecast record of 106 million—held by the 1983 finale of "M*A*S*H". (More Super Bowl ads stories.)