From the way people are already drooling over tonight’s tweetable, hyper-connected Super Bowl ads, you would be forgiven for thinking that the famed Lombardi Trophy will be awarded to an ad agency, instead of the usual football-playing recipient.
But it’s not! Sporting event integrity, saved.
Nevertheless, the annual Super Bowl ad buzz is again in full vibration mode, slightly enhanced this year thanks to a host of new social ways to get even more impressions for advertisers and their corporate clients.
Sure, we’ve seen some of the best ads already, but there are—believe it or not—even more million-dollar 30-second spots coming to assault your eyeballs with materialism and barely-connected-to-the-product-that-they’re-selling bits of advertising genius arriving around 6:29 p.m. this evening!
With them will come hashtag contests from Audi; instant uploads of the 100 Doritos and Bud Lite commercials as they happen; and a return of YouTube’s Super Bowl Ad Blitz repository, which will host all the ads you’ll see tonight in one convenient place.
Oh, and related to that last bit, those YouTube ads will follow you around the web and replay themselves on sites that have implemented Google’s sprawling display ad network. It’s “remarketing” and it’s totally the future!
Lastly, Facebook, not one to be outdone by its bitter online rival, will tonight launch Facebook Replay (available here, should you be so inclined). This contest will rank ads based on how many people click that much ballyhooed “Like button.” The poke button, so prominently featured in Mark Zuckerberg’s recent SNL cameo, will apparently play no role whatsoever in selecting tonight’s top Like button-grossing commercial. A pity.
There’s also a football game on tonight too, or something. I think it has an iPad app. [Bits]