In fact, the most noteworthy thing was that CBS seemed to have been unable to sell all of its commercial slots. Especially towards the end of the game, I noticed that every other commercial was for CBS’ own shows, like NCIS and CSI and whatever other acronymed series the network has. My hypothesis about a possible cause? Social media. Seems like even the big corporations with the cash on hand to buy multimillion-dollar 30-second spots have begun to realize that social media marketing may have a greater impact on market share and “mind share” than even commercials during the most-watched television broadcast ever.

Case in point: While Coca-Cola still bought their standard slots for the Super Bowl, Pepsi decided to skip its Super Bowl commercials for the first time in 23 years, and instead invest the money in social media-related marketing. Comments from Larry Woodward, president and CEO of ad agency Vigilante, were likely similar to Pepsi’s reasoning:

“As television viewership has gone down, Internet usage, particularly social media interaction, has increased… in the important 18-34 demographic, a whopping 85 percent use social media (texting, blogging or social networking), and the phenomenal growth of social media has the attention of every major company.”

If CBS cannot even fill up advertising slots for an event has always drawn more than 80 million viewers for ~20 years, then a shift in corporate thinking about marketing really has begun!

Source: Picture from the San Francisco Chronicle.