The Greatest Show on Earth

Each year, in the marketing world, the Super Bowl has both advertisers and consumers circling the date on the calendar. Whether online and offline, across television, radio, digital, and word-of-mouth, no other single media event generates as much buzz. No other event offers such a powerful opportunity.

The incredible AdWeek montage of this year’s advertisements illustrates the level of attention that the spectacle commands. Enormous amounts of planning and effort go into the creation of ads worthy of the single largest audience of all time, which this year averaged about 113 million viewers in the U.S. alone. That opportunity for advertisers only grew greater as this year marked a definitive turning point for social media’s role in advertising.

According to social TV Analytics firm Bluefin Labs, this year’s Super Bowl XLVI became the single largest social media event in US TV history, generating more than 12 million comments from more than 5 million unique posters, covering topics from the game itself to the halftime show and the spectacular ads. For weeks leading up to gameday, advertisers utilized social media platforms to begin the discussion with interactive elements, further breaking the mold of traditional Super Bowl advertising without ruining the payoff of the first airing of a commercial.

The whole experience of the Super Bowl brings out excitement from more than just football fans; the enormity of it elicits a response from everyone. This year’s event brought record viewership and innovative new ways to involve the audience in the conversation, taking the impact of cross-platform marketing to new heights. Advertisers need to start planning for 2013 – the bar has been set – and the expectations are high.