Welcome to Super Bowl Week

Once upon a time, there was a single day when people anticipated big-budget Super Bowl® commercials -- sometimes even more than the football game itself. Fortunately for advertisers, that day has not gone away, but it has expanded into weeks, months and even years online.

We developed YouTube Ad Blitz™ -- our contest where people vote on their favorite Super Bowl commercials -- in recognition of this trend, and by voter and advertiser request, we expanded our 2010 contest to one full week. Any in-game advertiser could opt in to YouTube Ad Blitz, which made the opted-in commercials discoverable immediately after they aired on Super Bowl Sunday. Directly after the game, and ending on Monday February 15, 2.9 million votes were cast on favorite Super Bowl commercials.


The winners of Ad Blitz -- who received glory and placement in today's YouTube homepage ad -- were no strangers to the extension of Super Bowl Week. In fact, many of the winners had strategies that pre-empted Super Bowl day, some which began as early as summer 2009. E*TRADE, who placed 2nd, had a strong pre-game strategy with teasers of the beloved E*TRADE babies, as well as social networking engagement opportunities related to the popular campaign.

More than ever before, advertisers were ready for the online expansion this year. YouTube saw queries containing the brand term SNICKERS rise by 18,000% days after the game, and on YouTube Mobile, queries containing DORITOS rose 5,000%.

It wasn't just the winners who prepared for the trends this year. Several advertisers focused heavily on Promoted Video strategies. Many in-game advertisers bid on their own brand terms, as well as general SUPER BOWL related queries, to make their videos discoverable and to capitalize on increased search traffic. (Clicks on Promoted Videos were up almost 100% from the Saturday-to-Monday of Super Bowl weekend.) Even non-Super Bowl advertisers wanted to get in on the action. Pre-, post-game and not-even-close-to-the-game advertisers also leveraged Promoted Videos to take advantage of the huge search query volume on general terms related to the Super Bowl.

But just as Super Bowl day isn't the only time to watch the ads, YouTube.com/AdBlitz wasn't the only destination to vote on them. We launched several new features this time around -- voting from within a YouTube homepage ad, as well as voting overlays on embedded videos -- which meant people could cast votes in any place they shared and found the video, including YouTube, Facebook, and across the Internet. People were also able to tweet about the ads directly next to the videos themselves, and we saw thousands of tweets around #youtubeadblitz during the game.

We wanted to thank all participating advertisers who extended the life of their Super Bowl spot, teasers, contests and related videos on YouTube. And congratulations to DORITOS, E*TRADE and SNICKERS for placing in our Top 5!

Posted by Danielle Uhlarik, Ad Programs Senior Associate