INDIANAPOLIS, United States – The commercials featured in Super Bowl breaks are highlights in themselves.  A 30-second ad slot during the game costs $3.5 million, but the big-name clients manage to increase their value for money and audience by uploading their messages to YouTube and social networks weeks before the match. So the commercials become part of the pre-buzz for the game.

Millions share and view their favourites via their smartphones. This viral effect can stretch the life of an ad by as much as a month. And it’s the hunger for this kind of video viewing that has partly driven the design of phones like the Nokia Lumia 900, with its 4.3-inch screen, and LTE Web browsing. Sales of this type of Web powerhouse can only contribute to future growth of the Super Bowl commercial extravaganza.

As Mae Anderson says in the Huffington Post: “Releasing the spots early is a way for advertisers to engage people where they spend a lot of their time these days – online.”

Here are some of the ads creating the biggest buzz this year. The first one, above, is an adaptation of Sacha Baron Cohen’s trailer for his movie The Dictator. His character General Aladeen brags: “Hey America I’ve just bought NBC. I knows the final score. Enjoy the game.”

 

This clip from Volkswagen, featuring a choir of barking dogs, has notched up approaching 12 million views on YouTube.

And movie star Matthew Broderick takes a Ferris Bueller-style day off work to cruise around in a Honda CR-V.

Comedy legend Jerry Seinfeld revives a character from his TV show in another Honda ad.

And Audi produced this spoof on TV vampire dramas which highlights its powerful headlights which wreck a Twilight-style ghoul fest.