Author: Kimeko McCoy

Any advertisers who want in on this year’s Super Bowl better be ready to cough up $8 million — and that’s just for the 30-second unit on NBCU itself. As one of the last bastions of monocultural moments in the U.S., demand for the Big Game has skyrocketed and inventory sold out last September. 

“It’s a bet — like, a large financial bet,” said Kerry McKibbin, president and partner at Mischief @ No Fixed Address, an independent creative advertising agency, adding, “So many CMOs’ budgets are strapped. It’s a calculated or strategic bet for them.”

Some advertisers like HexClad cookware brand, are sitting this Super Bowl out. Aside from sharing recipes and past imagery for a small retention and social campaign, HexClad won’t activate around the Big Game this year, said Matt Duckor, head of content at HexClad.

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In some ways, the total of wins, losses and successful retentions of accounts by the major agency holding companies in 2025 went about as one would expect. Publicis came out on top and WPP came out on the bottom. But the provisional tally for 2025 held a few surprises as well.

In almost unprecedented fashion, Publicis blew away its rival holding companies by a gigantic margin, landing $9.5 billion in wins and only $1.6 billion in losses. And, well, WPP ended the year very much in the negative, having lost more than $2 billion relative to what it won or retained, according to Comvergence’s provisional tally for the year. (The numbers reflect only media wins, not creative.)

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