This year's Super Bowl commercials featured rambunctious geriatrics, cross-dressing husbands and Jamaicans from Minnesota. But brand mascots, once a staple of the advertising world, were almost completely absent.
SodaStream's proposed Super Bowl ad was rejected for denigrating competitors Coke and Pepsi. But its brash advertising isn't the only controversial thing about the Israeli-based maker of soft drink machines.
Like many of us, savvy investors will be watching the Super Bowl with an eye on the ads. Those commercials are about more than brand building: Companies often use the Big Game stage to tout new, innovative products and ideas that you want to know about.
Every year, America gets treated to a Super Bowl side show of TV commercial controversies. Sometimes the ads air, sometimes they don't, but this year, Volkswagen, GoDaddy and PornHub are all getting pre-game publicity out of their Super Bowl commercial offerings.
Call it the "second-screen" Super Bowl. About two-thirds of smartphone and tablet owners use their gadgets to do things like text or post on Twitter while watching TV, according to research firm Nielsen. So, for Sunday's game, companies from Coke to Chevy are trying to reach fans on all the "second screens" they have.
Ferris Bueller used to desire the 1961 Ferrari 250GT California -- but we all have to grow up sometime. On Super Bowl Sunday, Matthew Broderick will play hookey in a new Honda CR-V: It is so choice. If you have the means, he highly recommends picking one up.
The Patriots and Giants will interrupt the entertainment to run some football plays, but everyone knows the Super Bowl is all about the commercials, and at $3.5 million for 30 seconds, sponsors must think they'll get their money's worth. But will their shareholders feel the same way?
NBC's Feb. 5 Super Bowl broadcast is already a financial winner, fetching $3.5 million per commercial while nearly selling out available slots. Just six in-game commercial spaces remain, an NBC spokesman said in AdWeek.
It used to be all about surprising game-day viewers with knock-out ads and creating buzz after the final whistle. But lately more advertisers are posting commercials online ahead of the game, trying to build early buzz instead. Which strategy works better? At risk is a tidy sum.
One year after sitting on the Super Bowl advertising sidelines, Pepsi is returning to the gridiron this year with its "Crash the Super Bowl" campaign. And it's bringing in the some serious star power to encourage consumers to create their own Super Bowl ads: screen legend Betty White.
The price of a 30-second Super Bowl ad dipped to slightly from a record $3 million in 2009, according to a study from ad researcher TNS Media Intelligence. But this year, the time allotted to ads could expand to a new record.