As audiences become fractured across platforms, the Super Bowl’s unparalleled advertising potential has become more important than ever. Nearly 100 million Americans watched the broadcast last year. A record 114 million US viewers tuned into the 2015 contest between the New England Patriots and the Seattle Seahawks, a thrilling game decided in the final seconds. Companies—or, in this case, politicians—can’t get that kind of audience anywhere else.

According to researchers at the University of Wisconsin, companies that air ads during the Super Bowl outperform the S&P 500 in the week following the game, while films that debut Super Bowl trailers often get a small boost at the box office. A Super Bowl ad is both the most expensive and arguably most valuable 30 seconds of television that exists. For the price of a 30-second ad this year, you could finance an entire 60-minute episode of most prestige TV series.

No previous campaign ads aired during the Super Bowl came close to the reach of Bloomberg’s and Trump’s. In 2016, Republican presidential candidates Jeb Bush, Ted Cruz, and Marco Rubio all aired ads during the game, but they were shown only in certain early primary states like New Hampshire and South Carolina.

The closest comparison might be in 2008, when then-candidate Barack Obama aired a Super Bowl ad in 24 states. That same year, he bought $5 million worth of national ads during the Summer Olympics in Beijing. Obama wound up winning the election over John McCain by a decisive margin, garnering the highest vote total in American history.

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