It's not often a football game is watched for market trends, but Wall Street yesterday took more than a sporting interest in the Super Bowl, played out before a television audience of millions in Tampa, Florida, for what it said about the American economy.

The grande finale of American football is the occasion for the biggest annual blow-out by US advertisers. The CBS television network, which has exclusive rights to the game, anticipated pulling in "the most revenue generated in a single day in television history", according to spokesperson Dana McClintock.

With the US economy cooling down, many analysts had forecast that the fall-out would depress CBS profits from this year's game, played between the New York Giants and the Baltimore Ravens. That apparently didn't happen. CBS said its 30second ads brought in on average $2.3 million each, up from $2.1 million a year ago.

This may be partly because the Super Bowl coverage retains stupendous reach - almost half the American public - while viewing numbers for other networks have declined. But along with some other mildly-encouraging data, the rush to cash in on the game bolstered the arguments of those who say the economy is not in free-fall.

CBS, which is also running the premiere of Survivor 11 after the football to hold on to the audience, denied reports that pricing for commercials during the game had been flat or down.

It was not just the amounts pulled in but the type of advertising that underscored trends in the US economy. A year ago, a "goofy-ass year" in the words of CBS MarketWatch, the dot-com bubble all but pushed traditional brands off the screens. With the e-commerce start-ups humbled, traditional advertisers returned yesterday in force.

Instead of a barrage of commercials for on-line services, couch viewers across America were zapped with messages from old-economy companies like Philip Morris, M&Ms Bars, Sony and Levi Strauss.