Advertising fascinates me .... We've done a lot of research this week & are extensively covering how companies are playing to win before, during & after the big game on Sunday. Here's a rundown of when you'll see the ads & some of the back-stories. Just think, if you take 2 minutes to read this blog, your friends & family will think you've read the functional equivalent of about 100 websites & 50 national newspapers. Hey, it's our job ... Here's the crib notes:

Super Bowl Advertisers

First Quarter Audi - :60
Car.com - :30
Under Armour - :60
FedEx - :45
Doritos - :60
Salesgenie.com - :30
Dell Computers - :30
Bridgestone - :30

Second Quarter Careerbuilder.com - :30
Garmin - :30
Chevrolet - :60
Tide To Go- :30
Toyota - :30
T-Mobile - :60
White House Office of National Drug Control Policy - :30

Third Quarter Bridgestone - :30
Cars.com - :30
Salesgenie.com - :30
Careerbuilder.com - :30
Hyundai Genesis - :30
E-Trade - :30
Planters Peanuts - :30
Victoria 's Secret - :30

Fourth Quarter Sunsilk - :30
Toyota - :30
ETrade - :30

• What these ads really are: The highest-visibility, most expensive ads placements in the universe.

• Who they reach: This year's broadcast will reach 1 billion people in 232 countries and territories. In the United States alone, the game will be watched by almost half the country's population. (Edmunds.com) Hard-to-reach males are also a top target.

• Cost: Last year, 30-second spots during CBS's broadcast of Super Bowl XLI sold for about $2.6 million each, but they were still scrambling to sell all the spots in mid-January. At the end of October 2007, Fox had, reportedly, sold about 56 of the 63 in-game 30-second avails, with the price peaking at about $2.7 million per unit. Sources say at least one of the five spots since sold has brought in $3 million. (Ad Week Nov. 2007)

• Do the ads work? Nielsen Online's Super Bowl buzz-monitoring program includes near real-time analysis of messages and opinions expressed across nearly 70 million blogs, message boards, online communities, video sharing sites, and sport-enthusiast sites. Buzz will be analyzed by volume, emotion, favorability, specific issue and penetration among influential consumers.

• Why the early sell-out this year?
  • Fox this year offered advertisers two innovations as value-added incentives that helped motivate particularly movie companies and automakers to participate in a bigger way. A deal between Fox and MySpace (both News Corp. companies) will enable in-game Super Bowl advertisers to have their commercials placed on a special Super Bowl site on MySpace, where the advertisers can also add special video, such as extended movie trailers. The MySpace site will be promoted during the Super Bowl telecast to drive viewers to the site.

  • Fewer huge ratings TV shows has limited other possibilities for big advertisers.

  • The growing threat of digital video recorders. The ad-skipping epidemic has caused marketers to place a bigger emphasis on big TV events that consumers tend to watch live rather than record.

  • This year has had the biggest buzz since the 1999 dot-com Super Bowl advertising craze.

• Does Pre-Game Buzz matter?

• Last year, brands announcing before January 15th got 10 times the coverage and discussion as those who announced in the final week before the game.

• The top six brands in pre-game media coverage remained among the top seven brands in post-game consumer discussion.

• Study, from Cymfony, a unit of TNS Media, Watertown, Mass. , shows companies that promoted their involvement before Jan. 14 generated twice as much buzz as those that waited. It also shows companies that unveiled ads online before kickoff generated 4.3 times more postgame coverage than advertisers who simply announced their participation.

Traditionally the biggest Super Bowl advertiser, AB will have 8-10 spots in this year's game.

• The idea of secrecy is even being used as a marketing gimmick. Anheuser-Busch is touting a "secret" spot that will only be available to those who have submitted a cell phone number and text their rating of the brewer's Super Bowl ads during the game.
• Two of the Bud Light ads will rely on "rug-pull" gags involving special powers that the beer supposedly endows on drinkers. In one spot, Bud Light claims to give people the ability to breathe fire - something that goes awry when two people are out on a date - while another spot claims the beer gives people X-ray vision, something a young woman who gets it wishes she didn't have.
• Other Bud Light spots include a humorous look at some cavemen who stumble upon a useful discovery - the wheel - when they need a way to get their cooler made of stone to a party. Another spot depicts a clever way that a guy attending a wine and cheese party still gets to enjoy his beer.
• The Clydesdale spot, which usually features an uplifting theme, focuses on a horse that didn't make the final cut to join the team and took a year to train - with a Dalmatian.
• Hispanic comedian Carlos Mencia will also appear again in an AB commercial (he was a big hit last year).
  

There will be five new commercials for Pepsi and Sierra Mist on Super Bowl XXXVIII. They will also heavily promote their non-carbonated "new-generation" drinks in a face-off against Coke. A couple of their ads...

• Justin Timberlake, whose 2004 Super Bowl dance with Janet Jackson produced the "wardrobe malfunction" that has chilled broadcast content ever since, will star in a Pepsi spot this year - as will Pepsi's 60-foot "Gift Monster."
• Gatorade (a Pepsi product) is using the stage to pump up interest in its newest brand, G2, a lower-calorie version of Gatorade with ads featuring sports stars Derek Jeter and Dwayne Wade. Jeter says the first time he'll see the full ad is at game time.
• This, unprecedented ad, is my personal favorite. Here's Making of the Ad.
  
  

While they showed a little leg to reporters, company executives made everyone who viewed the ads to sign a confidentiality agreement. Their ad relies on humor – and giving away the punch line would undermine the game-time impact. The ad is dubbed "The Queen of Hearts." Careerbuilder.com, which was praised in 2005 and 2006 for spots in which a man was stuck in an office full of monkeys, then was slammed in 2007 for spots where office workers fought each other. Careerbuilder fired its ad agency right after last year's Super Bowl, which illustrates how critical this game is in the ad biz. Despite that, last year, the number of visitors to CareerBuilder's Web site increased by 1 million to 2 million a month in the months following the Super Bowl, the company says.

In their first-ever Super Bowl ad, Dell Inc. will air its first Super Bowl commercial this year to promote a set of special-edition personal computers it's selling to raise money for AIDS treatment programs in Africa. The ad will feature mega star Brad Pitt. There's a tie-in with Go Red, St. Bono's charity for Africa . Brad will donate his pay from the gig to that cause.

Last year, Garmin produced a campy takeoff of a 1950s-era Godzilla movie. In the 30-second spot, Garmin Man used a Garmin Nuvi navigator to take on a paper map that had become the not-so-terrifying Maposaurus. Critics found the commercial confusing. The Kellogg School of Management said Garmin's commercial was the worst of the lot shown during the event. Despite the criticism, more than 525,000 people have watched the commercial on YouTube. It was one of the most talked-about ads last year. This year they will release more info this week.

Frito-Lay's Crash the Super Bowl is promoting Doritos by hosting an online contest – consumers submit an original song (it doesn't have to be like last year's competition where the video had to be a Doritos commercial) and the winning video will be aired in a 60 second spot during the Super Bowl. Consumers voted for their favorites, narrowing the field over the last few months. Frito-Lay's advertising company will make music videos of the final three contenders so the winning ad is ready for the big game.

• Why this is so clever: The consumer contest enables Frito-Lay to leverage a Super Bowl ad buy into a three-month online interaction with consumers. Last year's video contest showed consumers will visit and revisit the contest site, and not just to watch the potential winners. As with the auditions for American Idol, there is also a fascination with really bad performances. In addition, this is a snack company – the time they want you thinking about their product is BEFORE the game so you go out and buy it.

• Lessons learned: The two weeks allowed in last year's competition was not enough – social networking takes more time.

In its first-ever Super Bowl appearance, sportswear maker Under Armour will use the world's biggest advertising stage to introduce Prototype, a cross-trainer shoe, in a bold bid to compete with Adidas and Nike. Under Armour's 60-second spot will feature sports personalities in extreme-training conditions. While the ad isn't completed yet, images may include National Football League player Vernon Davis dragging a tractor tire, or professional race driver Carl Edwards doing lunges holding a cement block. The ad will direct viewers to underarmour.com to order the shoe, available May 3.