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A commercial slot during the Super Bowl is, it鈥檚 no secret, the hottest property in all of advertising. A 30-second spot during this year鈥檚 matchup between the Seattle Seahawks and the New England Patriots costs north of $4 million. But is it really worth it?

Let's get this out of the way quickly: Yes, for a lot of reasons we鈥檒l get to later, a commercial in the Super Bowl is extremely valuable. But as NPR , some studies suggest that the big game presents major difficulties for advertisers trying to get their ultra-pricey ads to translate to sales.

First off, to convince you to buy their products, companies have to get past your famous game day nachos. A psychological from the University of Wuerzburg in Germany found people were less susceptible to messages conveyed through advertising when they were eating. 鈥淐ommercials for foreign brands were shown in cinema sessions while participants either ate popcorn, chewed gum [experimenters called this 鈥渙ral interference鈥漖 or consumed a single sugar cube,鈥� an abstract of the study reads. The control group, the sugar cube eaters, responded more to brands they had seen advertised, while the popcorn/gum people weren鈥檛 affected by the ads at all. 鈥淎dvertising might be futile under ecological situations involving oral interference, such as snacking or talking, which ironically is often the case,鈥� researchers concluded.

And good luck finding a nonsnacker watching the game: Americans buy and consume more food on Super Bowl Sunday than any other holiday except Thanksgiving. An estimated $143 billion will be spent by those celebrating, and about 80 percent of that will be on food, according to the National Retail Federation.

Another problem: In proportion to the high cost, viewers may buy less in response to commercials that run during major sporting events than they do from ads that run during other types of programming. That鈥檚 according to another , from the marketing department at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands, that analyzed hundreds of brands in the United Kingdom that ran TV spots during events like the World Cup and the Olympics. Researchers theorized that 鈥渂eing in sort of the hyper-excited state that people are as they're watching these big sporting events might not actually make you very conducive to processing the content of the ads,鈥� according to NPR.

So, should Pepsi, Ford, and the rest abandon their costly Super Bowl spots? Not necessarily. Even with all that distracting sports and eating going on, the Super Bowl is still consistently the highest-rated TV program of the year 鈥� last year鈥檚 game drew in 108.6 million viewers, a record. It鈥檚 also the biggest event in live sports, which, with the rise of DVR and on-demand programming, is one of the only areas of TV programming that still delivers a captive audience for commercials.

It鈥檚 also the only event on TV where the commercials count as part of the entertainment, not an interruption. About half of viewers watch the Super Bowl solely for the commercials and halftime show; this year, Dish Network even launched that lets viewers skip over the football and watch only the ads. In recent years, many companies have begun releasing their Super Bowl ads early online 鈥� just by virtue of being Super Bowl ads, this means they get talked about for an extra week or so. For companies looking to burnish their brand鈥檚 reputation, or even present a new image to the world, there鈥檚 no quicker way to do it.

鈥淭he Super Bowl is one the safest bets I鈥檝e ever seen,鈥� Rob Siltanen, an advertising agency executive, wrote in Thursday. 鈥淲hat other venue better assures that people are going to watch your commercial or talk about your brand more than being on the Super Bowl? What other venue says you鈥檙e a first-rate, big-time, trustworthy brand more than the Super Bowl?鈥�

And to get that level of exposure, as the eye-popping price tag for a Super Bowl ad shows, companies are happy to compete for attention with a few potato chips.聽