http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/07/business/media/already-marketers-look-past-christmas-to-the-super-bowl.html 2014-11-07 02:46:02 Already, Marketers Look Past Christmas to the Super Bowl Super Bowl XLIX is 86 days away, but reports about who is buying ads for it are already emerging. === WHEN Madison Avenue starts Halloween advertising before Labor Day and Among the brands that have acknowledged buying commercials from NBC in the game on Feb. 1 are Doritos, which will, for the ninth time, sponsor a consumer ad-making contest called Crash the And Visa — a sponsor of the The front-running of Super Bowl hoopla is partly a result of holiday creep and partly of the popularity of social media like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. They make it much easier to discuss and share Super Bowl spots well before the game, which NBC has so far kept mum about its Super Bowl ad rates and declined to How NBC fares with the pace of sales and the prices charged is being watched perhaps more closely than such matters usually are for two reasons. One is to gauge whether the National Football League is suffering any lingering aftereffects from the recent uproar over domestic violence by players and Although the Super Bowl is typically the most-watched television program each year — and usually the only show that generates anticipation for commercials among viewers — it is not immune to the larger forces that affect the ad sales market. So if demand in general is slack, it means that spots in the game could take longer to sell, and could sell at lower prices, than during boom times for television ads. Despite the American economy being “reasonably strong,” said Richard Greenberg, an analyst at BTIG Research, “across the board, TV advertising is just soft.” “Something’s going on,” Mr. Greenberg said this week in remarks during the annual Video Everywhere conference sponsored by the Digital Place Based Advertising Association. “Engagement with TV is falling.” Mr. Greenberg attributed the “weak” results for television ad sales to changes in behavior such as viewers becoming accustomed to watching programming without commercials on streaming video services like Amazon Prime Instant Video and Netflix. “Does binge viewing drive live viewing?” Mr. Greenberg asked rhetorically. “Or does binge viewing drive more It could be that “we’re training consumers to avoid ads,” he said. Joining Super Bowl advertisers in starting the countdown to the game early is a media-literacy organization, the Lamp, that encourages students to take a more critical perspective on advertising. The Lamp sponsors an “The kids love it,” said D.C. Vito, executive director of the organization. “It’s not just a matter of re-editing commercials. It’s about thinking critically about ads. Find an ad with a gender stereotype and win a pair of headphones.” “We’re trying to have more students at more sites,” he added, and the group is considering expanding into examining the commercials during other so-called big event television shows like the Academy Awards and the