Super Bowl Ads Online at YouTube

With some advertisers spending more than $2.6 million for a 30-second commercial during Super Bowl XLI, companies are turning their advertising efforts online. Companies like Snickers, GoDaddy.com, and Nationwide Insurance, who have all bought spots during the Super Bowl, have also posted their ads online early to get positive feedback and build up hype for their ads that will broadcast on Sunday.
What about those companies who can’t afford a 30-second spot during the Super Bowl? Well one group of six self-proclaimed “Web 2.0” companies has formed to create ads that ride the wave of Super Bowl advertising without actually advertising in the Super Bowl.
Priced out of the big game, internet startups meebo, Meez, Multiply, Plaxo, RockYou.com and Technorati opted this year for a more frugal and fun approach. Having watched our dot-com bubble predecessors spend millions on ads that ran once, we charged up our handheld video cameras and started shooting. As you’ll see, the results are zany and full of laughs. You can view their ads on YouTube.
“Instead of spending a lot of money to put ads on the Super Bowl, we’d throw them up on YouTube and try to get as much viral going as we could,” said Michael Lehman, director of marketing for Meez.com. “By letting our audiences know this is up there and sending them to YouTube to see not only ours but also the other videos from the other companies, it’s a great way to cross-pollinate our audience.”
The idea behind the videos is that the Internet provides a level playing field for ads that will then run side by side against Super Bowl ad repeats. YouTube will be hosting the aired Super Bowl ads after the game is over on Sunday. Log on and vote!