Is the Super Bowl the ultimate marketing ecosystem of paid and earned media? 2010 will be huge test, as the new reality of consumer expression and cross-platform integration create a powerful new dynamic hovering over the largest single-spot ad spend on record.

What marketers urgently need to understand is not only total ROI on that mega-media buy, but the full return on all the other activities triggered or reinforced by this paid media stimulus. How does paid media drive earned media? And to what degree does earned media halo future paid media efforts? These are critical questions that Marketers need answers to – along with a metric or common yardstick that quantifies the blending of the two.

Getting Real about Real-Time
In an more agile and flexible marketing environment, where there’s actually a chance of making real-time changes based on available data, marketers need to understand the real-time role they can play in making tactical interventions to grow earned media impressions and ultimately, increase odds of success.

Twitter brings a fresh dynamic and promise to Super Bowl media efficiency. The platform reached a reach tipping point in 2009 – so much so that marketers increasingly use it to fan the flames for events, interact with brand mavens or enthusiasts, and, in a growing number of cases, manage or sandbag tension points like customer disappointment or service shortfalls.

Tweets are also increasingly embedding themselves in Facebook feeds, blog entries, and Google search results, magnifying their long-term value. Translated to the Super Bowl, positive playback about Super Bowl ads can have a “latency” effect and provide brands with an almost endless annuity of “earned media.” The same dynamic will be at work with Facebook brand fan pages, which can see massive growth – hundreds of thousands – following a major ad campaign, offline or online.

Quantifying the Big Picture
In the end, Super Bowl spots today need to meet two distinct “torture” tests – one measurable based on traditional TV scoring, and another based on unique dynamics of cross-platform engagement, most notably word-of-mouth and conversation. On a pure TV-impression alone, one can argue that the Super Bowl has become such an unusual magnet for consumer attention and recall – the one day of the year that we “celebrate” advertising – that it is worth every penny. Indeed, curiosity, anticipation, guessing, nostalgia come into play big time before this festival of brand persuasion. Consumers, after all, want to see the ads, almost akin to seeing a movie.

The entertainment halo certainly matters. Over the last three years, Nielsen IAG research found Super Bowl spots achieved a 31% higher break-through and 93% higher likability than the typical ad on television. But it’s not that simple. Timing is also a factor. First and second quarter spots yield more yardage than second half spots, and 4th quarter spots are about comparable to a “normal” TV buy in terms of generating ad recall. The viewer’s ability to associate the correct brand with the ad, and reported likability levels similarly wane over the course of the game. Surprisingly, branded integration effectiveness shows an opposite trend. Recall and brand opinion are lowest pre-game, moderate during the game, and big gainers post game. For Marketers, the mix is clear: focus on ads early and branded integration efforts late. Lastly, the SuperBowl is a touchdown for brands generally: purchase consideration for the average ad the week after increases +13% versus the week prior.

So that’s the foundation of pure “paid” measurements. What about the “earned” side of the equation, which factors in free media, consumer conversation, participation, and the like? Clearly, the Super Bowl in particular shines light across a far more complicated mix of marketing activity and user-engagement. Great copy finds life in other places.

An engaging, even participatory Pepsi game spot, for instance, might trigger a site visit, a Google search, a tweet, retweet, fan-page sign-up, or DVR rewind. It might trigger a desire to share, forward, discuss, critique, rate, or review. It might bleed over into the social media stream of a New York Times or any media reporter (a growing number of whom leverage social media across all platforms.)

The good news is that this digital trail can be quantified with high levels of precision – by volume, reach, tone, source, or even depth of brand advocacy. And much of this can be delivered in real-time, empowering today’s brand manager to make real-time changes or adjustments to the site. Last year, for instance, a large percentage of brands buying spots on the Super Bowl made real-time adjustments to their websites or social media efforts based on pre-game variables.

This year, Frito-Lay’s Doritos brand sits on the extreme of early-adjustments, as the four spots they are running are sourced from user-participation events and contests. In this case, the “earned media” is stimulating the paid side of the equation. Then again, this can work in reverse. When P&G’s Tide brand ran a highly engaging “Talking Stain” spot two years ago, it triggered a user-generated contest that created an impressive annuity of online video that quickly reshaped the brand’s search results for the better. Three years ago, Nationwide insurance estimated that the “earned media” dividend from their Kevin Federline spot totaled over $20 million dollars.

So in the end, it’s just not as simple as “buying” high-reach media. The broader ecosystems truly matter. This year, Nielsen is putting its biggest effort into measuring and quantifying the full return of Super Bowl advertising, combining a comprehensive suite of paid media and earned media metrics into a total “engagement” score. And we don’t intend to stop at the Super Bowl. Over the course of 2010, we’ll be applying our new cross-platform engagement metrics across our work on the Winter Olympics, Academy Awards, and the World Cup.

Webinar: Learn more about Nielsen’s comprehensive approach to the Super Bowl. Join Pete Blackshaw and Randall Beard for a webinar Maximizing Advertising ROI in a Paid vs. Earned Media Environment on December 8 at 2:00PM EST.

The pros aren’t the only ones enjoying the spoils of America’s pigskin passion. Among college football’s marquee games this past weekend, USC-OHIO St. delivered ESPN 10.6 million viewers on Saturday, the largest cable audience for a regular or post-season college football game ever.  And Notre Dame-Michigan was seen by 8.4 million viewers, up 58% from the two schools’ match up last year.

Last Thursday, when the Eagles announced the signing of Michael Vick during a preseason game, it set off a media storm locally and nationally. The game itself was seen by 647,000 viewers in Philadelphia, a 63% increase over the Eagles’ first pre-season game in 2008. Recent online buzz was also high. According to Nielsen Buzzmetrics, the August buzz surrounding Vick overshadowed chatter following his release from prison earlier in the year.

Whether or not Michael Vick is able to rehabilitate his image, the best news for the Eagles may be that despite a risky signing, reports say they have retained all of their corporate sponsors. In fact, Vick has already had an indirect affect on the exposure of Eagles sponsors: his press conference delivered exposure time not only for the backdrop sponsor, but also for the naming rights sponsor of the Eagles’ practice facility which hosted the event.

Just as the buzz began to subside around Michael Vick, news broke on Tuesday afternoon that Brett Favre, after stating more than once that he’d stay retired, was on a plane to the Minnesota Vikings’ training camp, pushing online discussion to levels nearly as high as Michael Vick. Favre’s press conference was seen live on national cable and local broadcast television.

Minnesota television is still buzzing. “Brett Favre” was referenced 452 times on TV in the market alone on August 18-19, according to Nielsen Grabix, which monitors closed captioning. The Vikings and their sponsors are no doubt hoping that the increased interest Favre brings will translate to more eyeballs for their ads and signage. Last year, in his first “un-retirement” with the NY Jets, Favre contributed to a 17% boost in New York viewership compared to the year prior.

With these two signings Philadelphia and Minnesota proved that they were teams willing to take calculated risks which delivered increased exposure for their sponsors, and they hope in the end, a Super Bowl.

“Our work with IMMI shows that TV usage out of the home is a big component of video consumption, which Nielsen clients want to incorporate into their advertising negotiations. Nielsen is continuing to explore ways to accurately measure out of home video consumption, to provide a more complete picture of how people are watching TV. And because of the current economic conditions we are focusing our efforts on a service that will be valuable and economical to the industry,” says Marie Philippe, program manager of Out of Home measurement for The Nielsen Company.

More at MediaWeek.

Read Nielsen’s Out Of Home Viewing report.

The study, which analyzed viewership data for some of America’s favorite sports, uncovered that while Major League Baseball and NBA pull in comparable audiences for nationally televised broadcast, when compared to the actual fan base in the United States, the NBA significantly outperformed most of its peers; NBA games were able to get 7.8% of its fans, on average, to sit down and view the broadcast.

The study also highlighted the strength of engagement for the sports. NFL fans, on average, watch over an hour of each televised football event; this was the only sport of the four to have over an hour of engagement per televised event.

Read the full study.

UPDATE: The chart below has been updated to reflect Super Bowl XLIII’s ratings

Read Nielsen’s complete Super Bowl report.

In about the time it takes to watch the Super Bowl- with its 30-minute halftime and extended commercial breaks- fans can enjoy two championship-caliber games.

A Nielsen duplication study reveals that 66% of the households that tuned in to last year’s Conference Championships saw BOTH games, with 85% of the AFC’s audience also watching a portion of the NFC game, and 75% of the NFC audience watching the earlier AFC game.

This year’s matchups have their work cut out to top last year’s 98 million gross viewers for Giants-Packers and Chargers-Patriots – the most for any Conference Championship Sunday since 1982. Individually, the NFC and AFC Conference Championships were the  2^nd and 3^rd highest rated television broadcasts of the year, ahead of the Olympics and behind only Super Bowl XLII, the second most-watched US broadcast of all time.

The AFC Championship Game on CBS features the Baltimore Ravens and Pittsburgh Steelers, fierce AFC North rivals, who last met up in week 15 for a matchup that was the second-highest rated regular season game of the year for both the Pittsburgh and Baltimore markets.

The NFC Championship will also be a rematch of an earlier game this season. The Eagles and Cardinals met up on the Thanksgiving Night game on the NFL Network, receiving a 1.9 rating nationally and 3.8 million viewers – numbers which will surely be dwarfed by this coming Sunday’s audience

The Eagles and Steelers, in particular, are no strangers to the national stage.

The Eagles, participants in five of the last eight NFC championships, have a strong following across the country. And this season they played in the most watched cable event of all time (vs. Cowboys on MNF, 9/15/08).

Meanwhile, the Steelers are as popular as ever with four primetime games, and seven 4:15pm games this season. Most notably, the Week 14 FOX national game, featuring Dallas-Pittsburgh in 90% of the country, was the most-watched NFL broadcast of the regular season, receiving a 15.6 rating and 25.7 million viewers.

What’s driving the wild success of EA Sports’ star product? 

A marketing vision that combines a deep understanding of the game’s core fan base with an innovative, “three-screen” strategy that leverages TV, online, and mobile phone outlets for the game, Matt Foran of Nielsen Sports, writes in the November issue of Nielsen’s “Consumer Insight” online newsletter.

Thanks to websites like Xbox Live, “Madden” gamers can head online to play with friends and anonymous fans across the country — making the game a communal experience, Foran notes.

“Madden” is also one of the top ten mobile game downloads: 142,000 mobile users downloaded the game in July 2008, paying an average of $4.34 for the game, according to Nielsen’s latest Mobile Games Report. 

Not surprisingly, the mobile version of “Madden NFL 2008″ skews heavily male.  In Q2 2008, 78% of the game’s downloaders were male.  However, Foran notes, the game also skews more middle age than the overall mobile gaming population: 44% of “Madden NFL ‘08″ downloaders were between the ages of 45 and 64.  In comparison, just 21% of the overall mobile gaming audience falls within that age group.

And because video gamers are avid football fans (in 2008, NFL games have drawn 44% higher TV ratings among households with video game consoles than those without, according to Nielsen), EA Sports expanded the “Madden” franchise into TV. 

The company partnered with ESPN to create “Madden Nation,” a “Survivor”-esque reality show airing on ESPN2, Foran notes.  The show, which draws an average of 300,000 viewers each week, has come up with innovative ways to integrate cross promotions of NFL teams and sports apparel.

“Madden” has also found success with other ESPN programs, such as “Sunday Countdown” and “Monday Night Countdown,” Foran notes.  The programs regularly feature “EA Sports Virtual Playbook” segments, in which ESPN analysts diagram the plays using the “Madden” video game with super imposed graphics. 

The takeaway for marketers?

Follow the “Madden” marketing team’s lead: a strong presence across multiple media platforms and a commitment to authenticity are essential for reaching increasingly empowered 21st Century consumers.

Read the full article.

View the latest issue of “Consumer Insight.”