Very interesting New York Times story, For Super Bowl XLIV Advertisers, Synergy Is the Name of the Game
Super Bowl ads have long been a marketer's most high profile and most expensive option for grabbing national attention in a unique situation where many viewers are actually more interested in the ads than the programming. After the advent of search marketing ten or so years ago, industry leading interactive/performance marketing agencies like Performics began to help marketers understand that search provided an effective and efficient net in which to capture the demand generated through offline channels, particularly with high profile ad buys like the Super Bowl.
Even recently, some leading marketers had still not caught onto this opportunity. Pepsi's recent Super Bowl Pepsuber promotion provides an excellent example. The brand coined the term Pepsuber in the ad and so could've had paid search ads setup for very low cost bids, but they didn't capitalize.
Today, as the NY Times reports, this type of cost effective, performance marketing support for Super Bowl ads isn't enough. Brands that invest in the Super Bowl today are leveraging social media to hype the ads in advance and blanketing online channels to get more bang for their couple of million bucks.
Maybe they'll even luck out and get a rare good game out of the Super Bowl to boost the odds of those fourth quarter ads actually being seen ...