Super Bowl Commercials, Super Bowl Xlvi | featured news

It looks like studios using short teasers to promote the trailer is becoming a trend, and they are here to stay. I first noticed this when Fox released three slight different short teasers (over three days!) to inform us that the Prometheus trailer is coming out. Of course, like a starving person with our first meal in days, we gobbled that up and spilled much digital ink about those teasers, dissecting them until there's really nothing left to say. And we liked it. It's the prequel to Alien, after all.

In the age of Twitter and Facebook, many Super Bowl viewers will use the commercial breaks to go online and see what people are saying about the game. This year, advertisers want them to tweet about their favorite commercials as well.

Super Bowl spots are still the hottest ticket in advertising. NBC has sold all the commercial airtime for the Feb. 5 game in Indianapolis and even has a waiting list of advertisers. The average cost for a 30-second spot this year was $3.5 million, with some time slots costing as much as $4 million.

Despite a steep increase in advertising prices and a lackluster economy, commercial spots for Super Bowl XLVI are all sold out, showing yet another sign of the increasing influence of sports TV on Madison Avenue.