Reid Carr President Red Door Interactive

That is a tough one for me to answer because I believe in the Super Bowl as a fabulous place either to catapult a brand or to cultivate icon status for some of our already popular brands.

Where else do you captivate 90 million Americans by commercials that are almost more exciting than the game? The Super Bowl features ads that are not intrusive, but part of the overall experience.

That special Sunday, DVRs stand idle and hours of broadcast time are dedicated to critiquing and even replaying those commercials. Printed periodicals highlight the best and the worst for weeks, while websites emerge either to lambaste or to praise the day's showing. Everyone talks about the ads -- love them, or hate them.

If done well, brands can establish themselves and extend the media buy to Monday water coolers and advertising Hall of Fame status; if done poorly, it is $2.5 million down the drain with brand or product names forgotten before the fourth quarter.

So, if you are going to spend the media money, all I can recommend is that you spend the equivalent of the media cost in supporting the buy with outstanding and entertaining creative, as well as with both web and public relations support. Then, closely measure web traffic, capture customer information and work hard to retain those users through vehicles such as email or mobile marketing. I guess my point is that if you can't spend $5 million or more, don't bother spending $2.5 million (and I would hope that you could at least buy more than one spot).

If I had a brand that had broad market appeal and could produce a cohesive, coordinated campaign that would draw users in with a variety of media, I would definitely support buying the Super Bowl :30. A great ancillary benefit is that you'd probably get tickets to the game, see the Rolling Stones in-person and let your co-workers fill you in on the commercials the next day.

Sarah Fay U.S. President Isobar

Depending on the goal of an advertising campaign, $2.5 million can either stretch over a long time period, delivering constant measured returns, or it can be used to pack a punch, hopefully elevating a brand's awareness and favorability with consumers in a short period of time.

Obviously, a 30 second spot on the Super Bowl is meant to achieve the latter objective, and the operative word is "hopefully." Advertisers will pay the ungodly sum of $2.5 million per 30 second spot because the Super Bowl offers the largest guaranteed audience of the year who actually pay attention to the ads. This alone does not justify the price, unless the spot breaks through, and generates viral activity, such as word of mouth. As we all know, it is not possible for this to happen with every ad that airs during the Super Bowl, or even half of them. So in order to make the Super Bowl worth it, an advertiser needs to "win" by popular opinion. If $2.5 million is a substantial part of your advertising budget, achieving this objective is akin to that "Hail Mary" long bomb pass at the end of the game. Good chance you will miss. If your brand is a relative unknown compared to the standard Super Bowl pack, make it 90 percent on missing that catch.

How about this? Instead of paying a premium for the biggest audience you can hit with one ad, try zeroing in on the target audience that is most likely to be receptive to your brand. The target, "Males 18 to 49" is very broad. You should understand which segments within that target will generate the most business for you.

Beyond demographics, what are their behaviors, motivations, and beliefs? When you identify an audience segment that is right for your brand, you can create relevant messaging that will allow your campaign to break through and engage that audience.

My advice is to take that $2.5 million and make sure it contributes to a central communication idea that plays out in multiple mediums that target high performing audience segments. It has been proven time and time again that advertising in a single medium is not as effective as two or more together. A coordinated program that meshes a combination of TV, print, and outdoor with digital can deliver:

• Impact, by encountering the target audience in many places. Multiple formats increase frequency while maintaining the campaign's freshness and elements of surprise.
• Involvement: By integrating digital campaign elements (online advertising, search, mobile, iTV, website, email) with traditional formats, consumers are given the opportunity to interact with a brand, and become engaged beyond message delivery. This gives the marketer more time with the consumer, and ultimately a better opportunity to be remembered.
• Activation: By combining offline "push messaging" with digital interactivity you can "close the sale" by inviting the consumer to buy, sign up, enter to win, or participate. Advertising campaigns that produce direct sales can be cash positive right out of the gate. But even if your business model isn't right for selling direct, you can use campaign efforts to activate interest, and build a database of customers who invite you to communicate with them in the future.

Can a $2.5 million 30 second Super Bowl spot play a role in such a program? Sure...as long as the budget allows it to be just that - a contributing role within a much bigger communications program. But if that spot is relied upon too heavily as a stand alone strategy and a shortcut to branding and sales, it is almost sure to disappoint.

Gay Warren Gaddis President and CEO T3 (The Think Tank)

This is like Monday morning quarterbacking way before Monday morning, but it's the kind of big question clients and agencies should be asking themselves.

First of all, there's great reason to invest $2.5 million in the Super Bowl.

It's the only time to get that reach. It's also the only time that a vast audience is actively involved in watching commercials. At the same time, they're also actively critiquing them. If you hit a home run, you get buzz. If you strike out, public ridicule. If you're in the middle of the commercial bell curve, you're burning $83,333 a second for being largely ignored.

So what else should advertisers do?

Make that $2.5 million work harder. We're curious to see how many spots drive people to immersive online experiences, rather than just 30 seconds of set-up, funny payoff and client logo. That could turn a half-minute of attention into a half hour of engagement. (Imagine the online experience that would support Apple's "1984" if it debuted in 2006 -- a long-form version of the spot, interviews with Steve Jobs, a "making of" video, dynamic product demonstrations -- viral components.)

Zag. Brands like Bud Light thrive on the talk value of winning the Super Bowl -- but not every brand has that personality. If you're not out there to entertain or if you don't have something big to say (Monster.com "When I Grow Up"), get out of the shouting match of the Super Bowl.

Instead, take what is more like $4 million ($2.5 in media plus another $1.5 for production) and put it into an online experience that generates a deeper engagement with a more select group of individuals -- something people will spend minutes with, visit again, and forward into their social networks (adding the credibility of a personal endorsement). For that budget, you can build one amazing online experience with video, audio, games, transactional elements, talk value, and media support. You'll make a deeper impression. You'll leave change on the table, too.

Jeff Lanctot Vice President and General Manager Avenue A, Razorfish (an operating unit of aQuantive)

Live events like the Super Bowl are like a trip down memory lane for advertisers. It's a moment in time where they can forget about media fragmentation, time-shifting and distracted consumers. For the luxury of that escapism, advertisers are willing to pay more and more every year. And each year they find memory lane a bit more crowded. This year advertisers will hope that their message will be heard over the din of monkeys in suits, talking dogs, pop stars selling pizza, Fabio hawking insurance and Mr. Spock popping pain pills.

Does that make buying a Super Bowl spot wrong? Not necessarily. It's one of the last big marketing events the industry has. For a few short hours, all eyes are on the game. And for a few short days, we'll all discuss the merits of the ads shown; surely there is some value in that Super Bowl halo. But the game ends, audiences disperse, and it's back to the new media reality. That new reality is a shock to the system -- new consumer behaviors, rapidly changing technologies and massive fragmentation. Too many advertisers see that landscape and act like a would-be dieter reaching for a last slice of pizza. "Next year will be the year we really commit to digital…but how about one more Super Bowl spot first?" It's not a Super Bowl ad in support of a digital strategy; it's a Super Bowl ad in place of one.

So what is a brand advertiser to do with $2.5 million media dollars online? Start with a bipolar branding strategy that hits the big properties as well as niche sites and blogs. Take advantage of Yahoo!'s massive reach, but also use their smart targeting products to make your message more relevant. Buy MSN's homepage, and blanket their video section as well. Take over ESPN the day after the Super Bowl. Own Fox Sports for the World Cup. Get a piece of CBS Digital's live online broadcast of all NCAA tournament games. Make an impact with a rich media ad on Weather.com. Launch a search campaign.

Then roll up your sleeves and start digging a little deeper. Find those sites and blogs that are off the beaten path. You're not going to find the reach of big properties, but you'll find small pockets of influencers. If your ads can stand up to the like of Fabio and Mr. Spock during the Super Bowl, surely they'll be popular enough to generate some viral buzz online. Drop those spots onto the long tail and set 'em free.

Support all of this with good research to figure out what your customers really want (and what they do) online. Track every one of these efforts so you know what worked and what didn't; advertisers who do are that much smarter next campaign.

There are lots of options in the new digital world, and a Super Bowl spot is still a reasonable one. Advertisers should just hope their spot isn't running late in a game where the Seahawks are up by 21 at halftime. That's like spending $2.5 million on a trip to memory lane, only to find a detour sign.

Elias Plishner Vice President of Digital Marketing Universal McCann

The efficiency of a Super Bowl spot can be best evaluated using some simple math. In 2005, Nielsen reported that the Super Bowl posted a 41.1 national rating, which converts to just over 86 million TV viewers. Good news for advertisers has been the emergence of this national platform, not only to showcase the best football teams in the country, but also the best (and most expensive) advertising. comScore reported that 28 percent of Super Bowl viewers watch the game for the commercial spots alone -- this transforms to 18 percent of male viewers, and 38 percent of female viewers who actually prefer the ads to the game itself.

Still assuming that 100 percent of the viewers watch the entire game and all 59 booked commercial spots (no bathroom or beer breaks allowed), you can still prove that the $2.5 million for a TV spot is way over-priced. Doing simple media math, this transforms to just over a $29 CPM.

So what would I do with the money instead? Well I would be a hypocrite (and not a good digital marketing evangelist), if I did not offer the web and streaming media as an alternative.

Broadband now accounts for over 80 percent of loaded page views on the web, so you can be sure that your video experience is top notch. With $2.5 million, I could transform a Super Bowl spot into a much more efficient web buy. Taking the top five sports sites alone (ESPN, NFL.com, Fox Sports, Yahoo Sports and AOL Sports), you could spread the cost over the course of a week, run rich media streaming :30 spots, and reach just over 17 Million people with 43.7 Internet Rating Points.

But everyone knows that today's Super Bowl has nothing to do with Sports anymore - especially when it comes to advertising. It's a mass marketing vehicle, which works for some advertisers, but can be an ultimate amount of waste for another. For example, if you are trying to reach Males age 18-34, Nielsen reports that 23 million viewers in that demo watched the Super Bowl last year. This translates to a $105 targeted CPM for a $2.5 Million TV Spot.

Instead, use the targeted nature of the internet, and serve ads, streamed with the same TV spot, targeted to your exact demographic. Based on conservative current rates for streaming media, this translates to over 125 Million Impressions for the cost of the same Super Bowl Spot - which is well over five times the number of ad impressions than that untargeted Super Bowl TV Spot.

Less Waste, More Efficiency, Better Results -- That's what it's all about.

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