It’s all about the commercials.  Watching Super Bowl Ads is becoming as big as the event itself.  It’s must see TV that lowers American productivity while increasing water cooler talk for at least a week.
 
​This year’s Super Bowl between the triumphant Giants and the Patriots drew more 111.3 million viewers for a new broadcast record (111 million last year).  Social Media mentions are tracked too and guess what—another record.  Last year the Super Bowl had 1.8 mentions; this year there were 12.2.
 
Andrew Fisher CEO of Shazam, the app for identifying songs, was tracking mentions as were other internet companies in the social television realm.
 
“The Super Bowl was our first major live network television event where we enabled people to interact with all aspects of the game, including the ads and the spectacular halftime show,” he told Forbes. “Knowing the size of the Super Bowl audience, we had high expectations for how many people would be engaged during the event and with the numbers in the millions we were blown away.”
 
This year’s game was hard to beat and so were the commercials.  Every year, advertisers and media outlets find new ways to rate the commercials. USA Today teamed
with Ad Meter to rank the best commercials.  
 
USA Today/Ad Meter Results
http://www.usatoday.com/money/advertising/story/2012-02-07/usa-today-facebook-super-bowl-ad-meter-winner/53004032/1
 
USA also recorded real time reactions on social media sites.
 
USA Today/Social Media React
 
http://www.usatoday.com/money/advertising/story/2012-02-07/super-bowl-ad-meter-social-network-comments/53004142/1