This year’s Super Bowl is expected to draw the highest television ratings ever for the National Football League’s biggest game, according to Nielsen Media Research.

It is the first time in nearly 25 years – since 1981, when the Oakland Raiders and Philadelphia Eagles squared off – that the game has been played by two teams from the top five television markets.

Good thing for advertisers since Fox has reportedly been charging a record $2.4 million for each 30-second spot during the game to be played Sunday night between the Eagles and the New England Patriots.

That’s $80,000 a second, the most expensive airtime ever sold. For comparison, prime-time spots on television generally run about $400,000 for 30 seconds.

In 1967, NBC reportedly charged $37,500 for a 30-second spot during Super Bowl I.

Fox will air 59 30-second spots altogether during the game. It sold its final two spots yesterday afternoon, according to a representative who asked not to be identified and who declined to name the advertisers.

Will they get their money’s worth? It depends on the ad.

For a benchmark, last year’s Super Bowl between the New England Patriots and the Carolina Panthers drew an estimated 88.8 million American viewers.

“The Super Bowl is just short of being a national holiday,” said the vice president of national broadcast for ad-buying concern Carat USA, Andrew Donchin. “If you’re trying to launch something new, if you have a great creative execution…These are very valid reasons for advertising during the Super Bowl.”

Mr. Donchin added that traditional measures of advertising effectiveness do not apply to the Super Bowl.

Besides getting consumers’ attention, Super Bowl ads and everything associated with them can really rev up an organization’s employees, he said.

“Where else do people actually want to watch the commercials?” said Mr. Donchin.

The other question hovering over this Sunday’s game in particular – besides whether or not the Eagles can overcome long odds and defeat the Patriots – is whether this year’s ads can overcome the puritanical chill that has descended on advertising’s biggest game as a result of singer Janet Jackson’s halftime “wardrobe malfunction” last year, in which her right breast was exposed during a duet with singer Justin Timberlake.

Whereas last year’s Super Bowl ads featured a crotch-biting dog and a horse passing gas, bathroom humor is out this year.

“I think we’re smarter than that. Things have to be funny and engaging and worth paying $2 million for,” said Mr. Donchin.

Though no tape delay will be in place during halftime this year, the NFL claims it is reviewing “all facets” of Sunday’s halftime show – which features Sir Paul McCartney and Alicia Keyes – to make sure nothing sordid happens.

As of yesterday, four ads had been axed as a result of content deemed unfit for the Super Bowl’s national audience.

The latest spot to be pulled was Ford Motor Company’s commercial for its Lincoln Mark LT truck, in which a clergyman finds a set of keys in the church collection plate.

As the clergyman admires the truck, a man shows up with his young daughter, the implication being that she had placed the keys in the plate.

The next scene shows the clergyman placing the letters L and T on the church message board advertising a sermon about lust.

Ford pulled the ad Wednesday after the group Survivors of those Abused by Priests said the little girl and the priest with the word “lust” in the ad had unacceptable sexual overtones.

Ford will run another ad in the nixed ad’s place, according to Fox.

As for the other ads deemed unacceptable, an Airborne spot featuring Mickey Rooney’s 84-year-old naked rear end was spiked, and Internet domain-name registrar GoDaddy.com had an ad rejected featuring a woman gyrating in front of network censors.

Also, Anheuser-Busch yanked an ad in which a stagehand uses Janet Jackson’s costume as a beer-bottle opener, rips the costume, and tries unsuccessfully to fix it, making light of last year’s halftime debacle.

However, Anheuser-Busch has arguably gotten just as much publicity for the spot by posting it on the Budweiser.com Web site.

Meanwhile, under Super Bowl business trivia, the products that get the biggest sales boosts during Super Bowl week are frozen pizza, with a $6.8 million bump, and potato chips with a $5.2 million increase, according to AC Nielsen.

Light and regular beer are third and fourth with $4.9 million and $4.8 million sales increases respectively during Super Bowl week, according to ACNielsen.

And percentage wise, cocktail franks get the biggest sales boost during Super Bowl week: 40.2%, according to ACNielsen.

Of course, not every business loves the Super Bowl. Movie box-office receipts during Super Bowl weekends for the last five years have been down an average of $11 million compared to average winter weekends, according to Nielsen Media Research. That means “Boogeyman” and “The Wedding Date” have their work cut out for them this weekend.