There was plenty of buzz about the commercials during Super Bowl XLIV, but many brands also received audience exposure during the game with in-stadium, scoreboard, or other brand placement.

TV ads airing in last year’s Daytona 500 were 26% more likely to be recalled by viewers than those who saw the ad run elsewhere.

In demographic analysis of Super Bowl ads, Nielsen uncovers which brands performed best with male and female audiences.

A Doritos commercial featuring two men attacked in a gym for stealing someone else’s Doritos was seen by an estimated 116.2 million viewers last Super Bowl Sunday, making it the most watched television commercial of all time.

According to preliminary results from The Nielsen Company, CBS’s broadcast of Super Bowl XLIV attracted an average audience of 106.5 million U.S. viewers.

A study of simultaneous TV and Internet usage found that 12% of Super Bowl viewers last year also spent time on the web, at an average of 24 minutes per user.

Performers like Bruce Springsteen who performed at last year’s Super Bowl see significant boosts to album, catalog, and digital sales.

“The early buzz data makes one thing clear — controversy drives conversation,” said Pete Blackshaw, executive vice president of digital strategy at The Nielsen Company.

A majority of households will be watching Super Bowl XLIV at home or at a friend or relative’s house instead of watching from a restaurant or bar.

National broadcast and cable TV networks aired over 43,700 hours of sporting events in the U.S. last year, according to new statistics released in Nielsen’s report on “The Changing Face of Sports Media.” Nielsen also found that advertisers spent an estimated $7.6 billion on sports programming alone in 2009.