Business

Six-second ads are coming to NFL games this season

Don’t blink — a blitz of six-second commercials is slated to hit NFL games this fall.

Fox Networks will begin showing six-second TV ads for NFL games on Sept. 10, right before kickoff on opening weekend of the regular season, according to reports.

The ads will be placed inside the usual commercial blocks of standard 15- to 30-second ads, but also during shorter breaks between plays.

Fox is banking that the new strategy will keep football fans on their couches with their eyes glued to their TV screens — instead of checking their phones or heading to the fridge — during lulls in action.

Fox, which tested the shorter ads during the Teen Choice Awards earlier this month, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.





The network says the shorter ads represent a new paradigm in TV advertising that’s well suited to other sports like baseball — and which advertisers also should embrace.

“We have already been collaborating with brands and agencies that understand the need to evolve the model,” Joe Marchese, Fox Networks Group’s president of advertising revenue, told Variety.

“They are the ones that are going to receive the prime attention and get ahead, leaving behind those that try to make everything fit a legacy TV-buying model,” Marchese said.

Fox Networks is owned by 21st Century Fox, which shares a common owner in News Corp., the parent of The Post.

By promising to feature the ads at unique, unpredictable times — instead of during commercial breaks when people are likely to stray from the living room — Fox can bill as much as $200,000 for six-second ads. That figure is roughly in line with the going rate for 15-second ads, according a New York Times report.





For football fans especially, there may be something to the shorter ad format.

Although the average broadcast time for a 60-minute NFL game is three hours, the amount of playing time is a mere 11 minutes, according to a Wall Street Journal report.

And the average play lasts only four seconds — just two seconds shy of the new ads.





Share this: