1:11 p.m., Feb. 2, 2010----For a gamble to pay off, the reward must outweigh the risk. This year, some of America's largest corporations asked themselves, “Is advertising in the Super Bowl a safe bet?”

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“General Motors, Pepsi, and FedEx have all decided not to be in this year's game for reasons that are not particularly clear,” says John Antil, associate professor of marketing in the University of Delaware's Lerner College of Business and Economics. “It has become a problem for some companies to try to justify these expenditures.”

Antil tracks Super Bowl advertising and he has spent more than 20 years studying the trends. He says companies now pay more attention to the return on marketing expenditures. Quantifying that return can be difficult, especially for Super Bowl ads.

Yet, some companies still wager that attaching their names to the country's most popular annual broadcast is worth the price, which originally ran $3 million for a 30-second spot, though Antil says many advertisers did not pay sticker price.

“This year appears to be setting a record for the largest decrease in pricing between when the ads were first sold and current pricing. It is also only the second or third time that ads are selling for less than they did in the prior year,” he says.

Powerhouse brands like Coca Cola and Budweiser will share the airwaves with smaller advertisers like HomeAway, an online vacation rental site, and at least one controversial non-profit group, Focus on the Family. The Colorado-based evangelical group plans to run an ad featuring 2007 Heisman Trophy winner Tim Tebow. The University of Florida quarterback's mother will join him in the commercial, which addresses abortion.

Antil notes this breaks with the standing policy not to broadcast any ads that are socially or politically controversial.

“The Super Bowl has developed into a major brand that needs to be managed carefully to maintain its image -- just like a premium brand,” he says. “Adding sponsors that are controversial or with a message that is even borderline acceptable could have a lasting impact on the reputation developed over the years.”

While Antil says the Super Bowl's value as a premium brand might be sinking, the ability of its commercials to drive consumers online may be rising. This year no less than seven Web-only businesses will be using the Super Bowl to attract people to their sites. Antil notes traffic to advertisers' Web sites grows dramatically during and after the broadcast with many achieving over a 100 percent gain in unique visitors and 15 percent of all Super Bowl viewers claim that they visit an advertiser's Web site.

Meanwhile, Pepsi, historically a major Super Bowl advertiser chose to forgo this year's game in favor of an enhanced online campaign. In what might be considered a risky move, Pepsi is adopting a strategy that will heavily draw on social media for it to be a success. The “Pepsi Refresh Project” is a campaign that will donate money to community projects suggested and selected by consumers. Pepsi set aside $20 million for this effort, about 25 percent of its yearly ad budget for Pepsi branded soft drinks.

Social networking and Web-based activities have become so important for Super Bowl advertisers, Antil says, that more research is necessary to try to assess the value of Super Bowl ads and Web-based activities. Working with prominent research firm HCD/MediaCurves, Antil helped design a special study to measure the online impact of Super Bowl ads that the firm is now conducting.

He says the resulting data will help companies better gauge whether or not they want to bet on the Super Bowl.

What to watch for

While watching the National Football League's big game between the Indianapolis Colts and the New Orleans Saints this Sunday in Miami, Antil suggests viewers keep an eye out for the following:

* Many Super Bowl ad fans will no doubt be upset if the predictions of Tony Panturo, the former head of Anheuser Busch's sports marketing, are correct. He believes that the Belgian company InBev, the new owners of the Bud brands, will spend far less on Super Bowl ads in the future. If they demand concrete evidence of the return on investment from being the biggest buyer of ads on the Super Bowl, his predictions will likely come true.

* The popular E*Trade baby will look very different this year. The company is using a new baby boy to show how easy it is to use E*Trade's site. They simply did not have enough footage to do more ads using the very popular boy.

* Diamond Foods will leverage their ads by promoting two of their brands. This is an uncommon strategy for the Super Bowl but perhaps wise on their part especially since the brands are closely related and happen to be consumed by millions during the game. Pop Secret popcorn and Emerald nuts will share the spotlight.

* Advertising clutter has become a concern for many given that the Super Bowl carries more ads than normal football broadcasts. Adding to the complication, more recently it has been publicized that actual playing time for an entire NFL football game is an unbelievably low 12 to 15 minutes. The rest of the time is for ads, watching pacing coaches, players in a huddle, walking back to line of scrimmage, etc.

* Most people do not realize that a large number of ads on the Super Bowl are regional ads that are not broadcast nationally. Some game minutes are given to local stations to compensate them for carrying the game. This has been one way some companies have avoided exclusive contracts with the network. So, for example, last year you may have seen very short ads for Miller beer even though Anheuser Busch has exclusive rights to beer during the Super Bowl. This ambush marketing can work very well and if a company buys enough regional ads, it can achieve almost full coverage of the audience.

Article by Andrea Boyle