Feb. 2 (Bloomberg) -- NBC’s broadcast of the Pittsburgh Steelers’ last-minute 27-23 victory over the Arizona Cardinals in Super Bowl XLIII averaged 95.4 million viewers, ranking second behind last year’s record-setting game.

The Steelers’ win over the Cardinals was seen in 42.1 percent of U.S. TV homes, according to preliminary Nielsen Co. data supplied today by NBC. The 2008 game between the New York Giants and New England Patriots drew a 43.1 rating and record 97.4 million viewers.

NBC announced on Jan. 31 its advertising spots fetched $206 million, the most ever. The network also set a new mark for ad revenue for the National Football League championship from pre- game through post-game, with $261 million. Peter Gardiner, chief media officer at Deutsch Inc. in New York, said the ratings exceeded his expectations.

“You just didn’t have the same story coming in as you did last year,” Gardiner said in an interview. “The teams last year, New York and New England, are storied franchises with rich traditions and a large fan base. The Cardinals weren’t widely known until a few weeks ago.”

Each rating point equals 1 percent of the 114.5 million U.S. television households. The 1982 contest between the San Francisco 49ers and the Cincinnati Bengals had the highest rating at 49.1.

NBC, last in prime-time ratings for the past four years, was still selling ads two days before kickoff, and reported two of the last four went for $2.4 million each on Jan. 28. The New York-based network, owned by General Electric Co., said 12 of the 67 spots fetched the original $3 million asking price.

National Audience

“NBC did a great job promoting this game,” Gardiner said. “They really went out of their way to make this a true event.”

The network set a Super Bowl advertising record without some of the game’s traditional marketers, including General Motors Corp. and FedEx Corp., which sat out because of the worsening U.S. economy.

GoDaddy.com Inc.’s “Enhanced” commercial, a parody of a congressional hearing starring race-car driver Danica Patrick, was the most-watched advertisement among the 30,000 households with TiVo Inc.’s digital video recorders.

Ads were ranked in part by how many times viewers watched again, Alviso, California-based TiVo said today in a statement.

Ad Rankings

The “Summer to Winter” commercial for Anheuser-Busch InBev NV’s Bud Light was the second most-watched ad of the game, followed by a spot from Careerbuilder Inc. The most-viewed moment of the entire broadcast was Santonio Holmes’s game- winning touchdown in the final seconds, TiVo said.

An ad for “Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen,” the film from DreamWorks SKG and Viacom Inc.’s Paramount Pictures, came in fifth and was the first movie trailer to reach top 10 since 2003, TiVo said.

The Super Bowl has attracted more than 40 percent of U.S. TV households since 1990, according to Nielsen. The championship has exceeded 90 million viewers in each of the past three years and is perennially the most-watched event on television.

Last year’s game pitted teams from two top-10 U.S. media markets, according to Nielsen.

The Cardinals’ home is Glendale, Arizona, outside Phoenix, the 12th-largest U.S. media market with 1.86 million TV homes. Pittsburgh ranks 23rd with 1.16 million, Nielsen data show. New York and Boston markets cover almost 10 million TV homes.

General Electric, based in Fairfield, Connecticut, fell 51 cents, or 4.2 percent, to $11.62 at 4 p.m. in New York Stock Exchange composite trading. It has declined 68 percent in the past year.

To contact the reporter on this story: Andy Fixmer in Los Angeles at afixmer@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: February 2, 2009 16:41 EST