The Superbowl is the highlight of the American sporting calender and it's on this Sunday, February the 3rd.
Duking it out this year are the Baltimore Ravens and the San Francisco 49ers.
If the on-pitch action isn't really your cup of tea it's well worth checking out the adverts, particularly the automotive Superbowl ads!
The Superbowl is watched by more than 110 million viewers and an ad slot during the Superbowl can cost as much as $10 million, making it the most expensive media money can buy!
Each year, the Super Bowl makes legends out of a few advertisers — and fools out of many.
"Super Bowl ads get scrutinized to within an inch of their lives," says Robert Thompson, who as professor of pop culture at Syracuse University does his share of the scrutinizing. "Super Bowl Sunday would not be Super Bowl Sunday without the commercials. I can't think of any comparable cultural phenomenon."
There is no comparable pressure cooker in the entire media world, says ad critic, media consultant and humorist Bob Garfield. "It's like borrowing money from your father-in-law," he says. "The implications of not paying him back are unthinkable."
Equally unthinkable: failure on the world's largest ad stage.
The shared goal of Super Bowl advertisers is to become multimedia darlings with ads that not only get the thumbs up from millions of consumers, but win the exclusive
USA TODAY Ad Meter rating, whose winners and losers among the game ads this year will be decided by an online consumer panel. Because of this intense scrutiny, Thompson says, there really are two concurrent, high-stakes games being played on Super Bowl Sunday: one on the field and one during commercial breaks.
This year VW have ditched the Star Wars theme and are taking a new approach:
Mercedes have decided to stick firmly with the 'sex sells' mantra
Toyota are using popular film and tv actress Kaley Cuoco in this pretty funny ad for the Rav 4
..and Hyundai have gone down the humorous route too with this less funny ad for the new Sonata Turbo
