Super Bowl advertising: an event on its own

It's been some weeks since the 2010 Superbowl where the New Orleans Saints defeated the Payton Manning's  Indianapolis Colts. The Superbowl is one the biggest - if not the biggest in terms of audience - single sport event in the world. It is not a very popular sport in Spain but it is huge in the US and I was lucky to be living in NY when the Giants won a couple of years ago.

Massive sports events bring big advertising dollars with them and in this respect Superbowl is THE EVENT. I remember analyzing this back at Stern at professor Geeta Menon's marketing course (she is now at Wharton). Back in 2007, a 30-second spot on tv was priced at around $2.5m. This year it's been at around $3m. I could not believe it when I first knew about it.

But on top of the tv dollars, the internet revolution has provided advertisers with a big opportunity to leverage their investment in tv time. In addition to the 30-second spots, commercials are widely followed online, which increases the number of impacts and, in turn, brand awareness. In fact, the Superbowl has become a landmark event where corporations showcase their best creativity, to the extent that commercials themselves have become a very important part of the Superbowl. There exist a lot of expectations about who will be advertising and a huge buzz is generated after the game to assess who had the best commercial. This is pure gold for brands. The power of viral.

Visible Measures, a Boston-based start-up that measures online video audience which I had the opportunity to know about at a  NY Video 2.0 meetup in 2008, has conducted some research on the occasion of the 2010 Superbowl. According to their study, the top 20 commercials were viewed in aggregate more than 50 million times, being 'Doritos' House Rules" the one carrying the most views at 9+ million. I liked Google'(s) (!!), Megan Fox plays her usual part for Motorola, Dodge's is the typical commercial for men... and how couldn't I mention the eternal Bud's Clydesdale! You can find them all here.