For the same cost as 30 seconds of commercial air time during the Super Bowl, advertisers in the blockbuster event’s telecast could book themselves at least eight days straight on YouTube’s homepage or over 400 million video network impressions.

The digital marketing website Digiday compared online media spend against the astronomical $4 million fee charged for a 30-second spot during the upcoming American sporting event. And that’s just for the media.

Based on a US price of around $500,000 a day to buy out YouTube’s homepage ad units, it was estimated that the same spend could claim 8 to 10 days on the heavily-trafficked video sharing site.

In addition, the cost would enable advertisers to buy 400 million video network impressions, based on an average cost of $10 CPM, or 100 million video impressions on online TV site Hulu, which charges $30 CPM.

It was also estimated that the equivalent spend could buy a roadblock on portals such as AOL or Yahoo for eight days, 200 pieces of BuzzFeed-sponsored content, Twitter’s Promoted Trending Topic every day for a month and 50 million Forbes.com first-page interstitials.

However, as Digiday points out, a spot in the illustrious event does allow advertisers to reach over 100 million viewers at a single time, and be part of the cultural zeitgeist.

But with high production costs, agency fees and celebrity endorsements usually associated with Super Bowl spots, the argument for optimising spend online is a good one.

Read: Marketing‘s Top10 Super Bowl teaser spots for 2013