While most of us try to avoid advertising on a daily basis, things are different around the Super Bowl. It’s the one time of year many people actively seek out commercials to watch. Google-owned YouTube is getting into the spirit of the football season early this year by offering a sneak peek at the 2014 crop of Super Bowl TV spots.
So far, YouTube’s Ad Blitz gallery has seven “teasers” for this year’s TV spots including ads for Butterfinger, Doritos, Intuit, and perennial podcasting advertiser Squarespace. There are also two ads from Pepsi hyping this year’s halftime show with Bruno Mars.
In 2013, several ads showed up on YouTube prior to kickoff and teasers for upcoming Super Bowl commercials are nothing new. But for the first time,YouTube says it will host game day commercials and teasers prior to the big game on Sunday, February 2.
It’s not clear how many full commercials will show up prior to the big show at MetLife stadium, but more teasers should be on their way to YouTube’s ad channel.
As with previous years, Ad Blitz will let you vote on your favorite commercials after the game. Google is also adding a few new features to Ad Blitz for 2014 including playoff analysis videos from Fox Sports and content from popular YouTube personalities.
Super Bowl commercials are a big draw for YouTube. The collection of 2013 Super Bowl ads were streamed more than 265 million times last year, and The New York Times says 80 million of those streams happened before the game even started.
All you need to create excitement around an endless string of commercials, it seems, are huge budgets and a tradition of creating over-the-top advertising.
Unless, of course, the football gods bless advertisers with another opportunity like last year’s power outage, which turned a tweet from Oreo cookies into the Super Bowl advertising phenomenon of 2013.