When Apple ran its "1984" commercial, I had just finished an MBA in marketing and started my first job in advertising. Nothing in my marketing education prepared me for how well that commercial worked. Now in 2006, I confess I didn’t realize what an advertising festival this year’s Super Bowl would be. It’s been creeping up on us for awhile, but now all the commercials that appear are dissected and rated, and in the process rerun millions of times on the internet, on iPods, and on the TV news.

While I was watching for the Bud Screen, AOL was building a phenomenal web site where you can view the commercials conveniently, vote and see the voting results. It’s a tremendous traffic builder for AOL, but they don’t even have to pay for it because they sold a sponsorship to HBO. What a coup!

The New York Times advertising critic Stuart Elliott has an excellent analysis of this new marketing phenomenon.

Many Super Bowl sponsors created microsites — special Web sites with
different addresses — to catch the attention of the postgame audience….

The microsites offer "a differentiated call to action that pushes
people to the Web," said Kieran Taylor, director for product marketing
at Akamai Technologies, which handles Internet traffic for 23 of the Super Bowl advertisers including Dove.

"The convergence of the Internet and television is only for those who understand the handoff from TV to online," he added.

In
some instances, said Pete Blackshaw, chief marketing officer at
Intelliseek, which is seeking to measure the postgame word of mouth
about the commercials, consumers are saying they like the microsites
better than the spots.

"It’s parallel to using  TiVo,"
said Mr. Blackshaw, whose company is soon to become Nielsen Buzz
Metrics. "It’s about consuming advertising at your own pace, and the
microsites are almost like portals for watching ads."