All of the excitement leading up to tonight's Super Bowl has little to do with the gridiron and much to do with the advertisements.
That's true, at least for some marketers.
Thus, John Battelle's Searchblog reports that Google will break longstanding tradition and run a TV advertisement during tonight's Super Bowl.
Battelle says this Parisian Love ad, which outlines how to "impress a French girl" through Google search, will be aired during the Indianapolis Colts-New Orleans Saints clash tonight, probably during the third quarter.
Battelle points out that Google CEO Eric Schmidt got the buzz going with this tweet yesterday: "Can't wait to watch the Superbowl tomorrow. Be sure to watch the ads in the 3rd quarter (someone said "Hell has indeed frozen over.")"
Hmmm. If Google's advertisers follow Schmidt's apparent lead, then perhaps they should set aside less money this year for text ads on Google, and consider putting a little more into harder-to-measure TV spots.
Microsoft, of course, has shelled out a lot of money since the Summer on Bing for TV and radio ads, and picked up a little market share.
Maybe Google wants to play a little smash-mouth football with little Bing.
As reported, Homeaway, the vacation-rental company, appears to be the only travel dot-com with an ad in today's Super Bowl, and it, too, is slated to run in the third quarter.
Here's HomeAway's Super Bowl ad. It was available several hours before the game.
For the record, Kayak, which has been running its "search one and done" ads during NFL games and elsewhere, says it won't be running these ads during today's Super Bowl.
At $2.6 million for a 30-second ad, who can blame them?