The annual Super Bowl is not only the showcase for the best professional football teams, it’s also the proving ground for new advertising campaigns and, sometimes, newly launched companies, says Debra Merskin, associate professor of advertising at the UO School of Journalism and Communication. In last year’s Super Bowl, television audiences watched advertisements launching a handful of new dot.com firms. At least half since disappeared, and you won’t be seeing them between plays on the football field this Sunday, Jan. 28. "Expressions like ‘the new economy’ are flying around to explain this situation with few of us knowing exactly what that means," Merskin notes. "In terms of last year’s Super Bowl, the dot.coms and their young turk owners saw an opportunity to swoop in and make quick bucks. Stock prices were not based on tangible assets, but rather on investors’ fast and furious charge to be first. They ignored the reality that the firms had a less-than secure electronic platform and an intangible product. Like the bust in the 1980s when brokers discovered online trading and such, it was a big run to the top for bucks and an equivalent crash to the bottom. For those who got out in time, it worked out. Advertising is a key player in the support of the media, and all media are impacted by the loss of advertising. The Super Bowl is significant in studying advertising trends and the economy because it is the most visible, and perhaps accepted, place that, in one sitting, you can find the largest chunk of the public actually watching advertising campaigns launched.

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