Top 10 most expensive commercials on TV – Sunday Night Football vs. American Idol

When you’re not fast-forwarding through them on your DVR, getting up to go to the bathroom, or taking a second to talk to your kids , commercials are there to take up space in your brain.

And while we might not pay as much attention to commercials as we used to, they’re still big money for TV networks. Not surprisingly, the biggest bills associated with a standard 30-second time slot during prime time comes with highly rated, result-based shows. That means Sunday Night Football (sports for me) and American Idol (sports for my wife) bring in the heftiest price tags.

Got a product you want to push to people watching Tom Brady and the Pats? That’s going to run you an average of $512,367 for half a minute of advertisements on SNF (you better sell a whole lot of light beer, Budweiser – because I feel like I saw about 50 adverts this week). Or – are you looking to appeal to the Steven Tyler crowd? Idol commands a range of $468,100 – $502,900 for the same 30-second spot.

With both of those programs, as the season progresses (and people are watching for results more intently) the ad pricing goes up, up, up. There have been some reported spots going up to $640,000 during American Idols finals. We all know that’s nothing compared to the $1million+ slots during the Super Bowl.

The good people over at Ad Age have broken down the top slots for ad spends. Here’s the rest of the Top 10:

1. Sunday Night Football
2. American Idol Wednesday
3. American Idol Thursday
4. X-Factor Wednesday
5. X-Factor Thursday
6. Glee
7. Family Guy
8. The Simpsons
9. Two and a Half Men
10. Modern Family

Do you pay attention to the advertisements during these shows? Are those ad dollar dollar bills being well spent? Sound off below, Mogo-ites.