[rkomorn]

Super Bowl ads, in particular, really are their own thing. People will even watch them later, discuss, share, etc.

There are some people who have more interest in the Super Bowl for the ads than the sport.

So I'd say it's not money flushed down the bowl.

Random fun fact: 20ish years ago, I used to work at a web hosting company that had superbowlads.com (iirc) as a customer. I'm not surprised it's no longer an actual site, though: I speculatively doubt NFL lawyers would've left it alone.