Super Bowl Sunday – a day full of friends, food, and football.  Maybe you cheered on the Saints at a local watering hole with a hundred of your closest friends.  Maybe you pulled for the Colts at your buddy’s house.  Or perhaps you were a spectator who watched from home while joining millions of others engaging in the online conversation surrounding the Super Bowl via Twitter, Facebook and other online channels.

Yes, Super Bowl XLIV was the most watched television program in history, according to Nielsen with 106.5 million U.S. viewers, surpassing the M.A.S.H. series finale that aired in 1983.  But users weren’t just tuning into the television.  The simultaneous use of the Internet while watching television is growing at an astounding rate, especially during big events such as the Super Bowl.

A study conducted by Nielsen in 2009 shows that 12% of Super Bowl XLIII viewers also spent time using the Internet during the big game- almost 4 times greater than the normal rate – at an average of 24 minutes per user.  35.90% of those users that engaged in online activity during the game were using search engines, at an average of 2.5 minutes per users while the 32.7% of users who engaged in the conversation in member communities spent an average of 16.1 minutes doing so.

So what does this mean for brands? Well, for those brands that paid millions for a 30 second-spot during the Super Bowl, it demonstrates the need to have an online presence to maximize the return on investment during and following the game. Users are searching for you so make your brand – and your commercials – present in search and social media channels.  Not only are they searching but they’re talking too – monitor and engage in the social media conversation.

Check out the Bridgestone’s Super Bowl commercials on YouTube and vote in the YouTube AdBlitz program.  By extending the television buy with paid search and YouTube promoted video campaigns managed by Levelwing Media,  Bridgestone’s “Whale of a Tale,” commercial peaked at the #13 Most Viewed Video of the Day on YouTube on Monday, the day after the big game.

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