Great thoughts. Thanks for your comment.

You’re right in that Super Bowl ads are cheap at $.03/impression, and that Social Media by itself would have a hard time reaching such a massive audience.

However, it’s more about what is effective. If you’re not converting viewers into customers, then what are you really achieving?

Obviously, every brand is unique. Everyone is going to have to decide what is best for themselves. It’s about creating engagement with your viewers. Doritos is doing a nice job with their current campaign.

We’ll see. I don’t think Super Bowl commercials are going to go away anytime too soon. They are still effective to an extent, but brands are going to have to get creative to keep it that way.

“Social Media” is going to have to work really hard to achieve that kind of outcome on its own. Even hitting 98 million people via social media is going to be tough as social media is still used by a subset of consumers.

The demographics of the superbowl is also different to online tools. Though we ‘early-adopters’ like to evangelise, there is still a (huge) percentage of the population who don’t have a facebook or twitter account.

The Doritos example is a great one because it is based on the fact that integrating the two media gives the best results. It’s not about one or the other, it is about a convergent approach.

Obviously different platforms work better for different brands. Established brands like Pepsi, probably don’t get too much out of it. I am unlikely to switch brands or increase my consumption because of a superbowl ad.

On the other hand, GoDaddy is building mass-market awareness and for that purpose, Superbowl ads are very powerful.

My guess is that the Superbowl, like the 100 metre final at the Olympics and a couple of other TV events will always be able to command high advertising prices, but the really savvy brands will combine their spots with supporting activation on whatever the trendy technology of the day is.