Avi Dan  wrote a piece for Forbes on whether the days of big money ads on Super Bowl Sunday are over.

Of course looking at a game that was a blowout makes those people who had an ad running in the fourth quarter cringe. They paid the big bucks for a much smaller audience.

Dan wrote in his piece:

The CMOs of Audi, Intuit , T-Mobile, Chobani, Kia, Sprint, Heinz, Honda, Chrysler, Microsoft ,Jaguar, Danon, SodaStream, and Go Daddy among others, might just have had an even worse day than Peyton Manning

You spend 6 months convincing your CEO, your CFO and the board that spending $4 million on a 30-second Super Bowl commercial, plus a couple million more on producing the commercial. And you figure that sticking your commercial after half-time, in what’s likely to be a tight game according to the Vegas oddsmakers and just about everybody else in the country , is the right spot to get maximum exposure.

The proponents of shelling out this fortune defend it this way:

• “But the Super Bowl delivers such a huge crowd.” That’s true. No other show can deliver such viewership numbers, even Sunday’s disastrous numbers. But that’s a matter of proportion. As more viewers migrate online or to their mobile devices, the number of eyeballs that TV delivers would necessarily contract.
• “But people are more interested in the commercials than the game itself.” Not so, as proved by yesterday’s game. Years ago somebody measured the level of water pressure in New York City during the game. It was considerably higher during the commercial breaks when people got up from in front of the TV and headed to the toilet. For all the hoopla, people tend to forget the Super Bowl commercials after a day or two.
• “But the Super Bowl is the Super Bowl of Advertising. It’s an opportunity to do something ‘special’.” In truth, research has shown, the commercials the viewers like the best are the least effective at selling. Rather than exploit this opportunity to sell a benefit, too many companies blow it by focusing on entertainment. And the entertainment is usually predictable: cute puppies, babies, celebrities, or sexy supermodels.

Dan goes into the reasons why the advertising is a waste for most companies, as Dan sees it many companies are in an era of frugality

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