Local Super Bowl ads provide cachet but still come at ‘significant’ expense

The longtime personal injury attorney specializing in car crashes has for years made commercials with a well-known jingle and memorable catchphrase and phone number that sometimes includes his family and pets, as well as actors playing appreciative clients or sidekicks.

And for the past several years, Mattar has been tackling getting his message out during the Super Bowl.

This year is no different. He is set to run a 30-second regional ad during the game, Sunday evening on CBS, this one filmed at the Buffalo History Museum.

With Super Bowl ads being among the most watched – and most expensive – of any TV event, William Mattar Law Offices will debut one of its commercials during the broadcast, reaching the local portion of the approximately 100 million people watching on broadcast TV.

“It’s a significant investment and a significant increase even from a regular Buffalo Bills game spot,” he said. “The Super Bowl is the largest-viewed event all year, so we spend a lot of time trying to come up with a concept that is entertaining and also spreads our firm’s message.”

It’s not the price that some brands spend for a Super Bowl ad, which is now upward of $7 million for a 30-second national spot, but these regional commercials can still come with a hefty cost. Mattar declined to say how much his ad cost to run on WIVB-TV in Buffalo and other upstate stations, but said it runs in the six figures.

For local advertisers, the cost is often a fraction of what the national brands are billed, experts say, but that increases depending on how many markets a company buys and the expense of each market.

Ads can be bought region by region, and Mattar’s plan is to target much of upstate New York. He’s buying a regional spot that will be televised from Buffalo through Albany and many of the bigger…