Some 30-second blocks of Super Bowl airtime are being sold for as high as $4 million — a $500,000 increase from the top seller in last year's telecast, according to USA Today.

The research firm Kantar Media notes that the increase means that the price “is growing at three to five times the rate it did just a decade ago.” 

"No one is holding a gun to the heads of these advertisers," Jon Swallen, chief research officer at Kantar, told USA Today. "Clearly, these are price increases the market is willing to bear." Swallen said he thinks the first 30-seconds-for-$5 million Super Bowl deal could air in 2016.

Those tuning in for the cola giants and other brand marketers suiting up for Game Day are in luck: The number of in-game ads has been going up, Swallen said.

One of the brands shelling out that kind of dough is M&M's, which had a much-heralded spot in the last year’s Super Bowl. M&M's won’t release its commercial or details of the ad in advance, according to a press release. However, the ad is tied to a new "Better With M" spot and social campaign that launched this week.Continue reading...

Syfy’s upfront event for advertisers, held yesterday at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, celebrated a cohort its research team is calling Igniters — “those highly imaginative people who shape the world in which we live and move brands forward faster,” and the key audience that has made the brand a top media destination for imagination-based entertainment.

The brand's on-air/online pitch to media buyers and brand marketers on the Syfy Igniters microsite: "Syfy sparks the imagination, inspiring curiosity and creativity among an influential audience who believes the world is full of possibility. By opening doors to new ideas, and opening eyes to thrilling new perspectives, we make the unbelievable...believable."

The NBC Universal-owned Syfy, which launched in 1992 as the Sci Fi channel (and shortened to Sci-Fi from 1999-2009), has held steady as a top 10 cable entertainment network among adults 25-54 for 16 consecutive years, and its bumper crop in original programming, digital and gaming media portend many more years to come.Continue reading...

Of course it isn't. But some automotive bloggers have gotten exercised in recent days under the false idea that sales of the Chevrolet Volt extended-range hybrid – really, a type of electric car – aren’t going anywhere and that General Motors doesn’t care about it.

Remember the conspiracy theories and angst that followed the demise of GM’s first all-electric car, the EV1, over a decade ago and resulted in the production of a documentary, Who Killed the Electric Car? (Actress Alexandra Paul, who appeared in that doc, has been helping Chevy plug the Volt, including asking Volt owners to help craft their own car manual, below.)

Well, consider this tempest in a teapot as a distant echo of that concern.Continue reading...