Friday Five: Super Bowl pre-game edition

As everybody knows, this Sunday is Super Bowl 50. It’s being touted as “the biggest Super Bowl the NFL has ever celebrated,” so it is a bigger deal than most of these events. It’s also the first Super Bowl in my memory that uses Arabic rather than Roman numerals, so that will make it more memorable for me because I will know with complete confidence exactly which Super Bowl it is.

For marketing nerds like us, the Super Bowl ads and everything surrounding them are a bigger deal than the game. The game itself is really a side show for many of us.

So, to prepare you for the big Super Bowl ad blitz, here are five things related to the marketing game:

1. The “second screen” tipping point. According to an analysis by Adobe and discussed by Venture Beat, Super Bowl 50 will be the first in which at least as many viewers will be watching on the so-called second screen (be it smartphone, tablet, laptop, smart TV or gaming console) as via traditional television. “TV viewership is becoming omnichannel,” said Tamara Gaffney, Principal Analyst at Adobe Digital Index. “We are entering a new frontier for online video.”
2. All the brands. If you want to skip the game altogether, Marketing Land has the solution: A listing of all the brands that will be running ads during the big game and many teaser clips. Bonus: You can follow all those brands’ activity during the Super Bowl by watching Marketing Land’s Twitter list of them all.
3. Super Bowl Ad Tracker. Everything Ad Week knows about the commercials, it shares here. Updated often.
4. Tech companies go for broke. Apartments.com, PayPal and others will burn through big bucks on ads.
5. “Real Talk” commentary by Key & Peele. One of those tech companies — Squarespace — is taking a different tack. Rather than spending bucks on a 30-second TV ad or two, Squarespace has recruited comedians Key & Peele to provide live commentary (in the guise of Lee and Morris) during the game. What could be better? You’ll have to tune in here Sunday evening, because it won’t be on your television.