The celebration of organized mayhem, unbridled capitalism and mass food consumption known as Super Bowl Sunday has, like Santa Claus, made its annual visit, leaving in its wake a football score and, thanks to an estimated $7 million per 30 seconds of commercial air time, several hundred million dollars in Fox's pocketbook.
And like Christmas, it's a season more than just a day, with ads teased for weeks on television and online, sometimes ending with a portentous, cliffhanging "2.12.23," the date the teasing pays off. (Though some were "leaked" in advance.) Super Bowl ads aren't just for Sunday anymore; indeed, if you watched only the game, you missed part of the campaigns.
They are a Thing Unto Themselves, these ads, an art almost irrelevant to the products they flog — sometimes barely mentioned, often easy to forget. Yet the gods of accountancy must have determined that whatever they cost to make and show, they're worth the effort and expense.
