The Nielsen Company will use its social networking platform HeyNielsen to measure the appeal of this years Super Bowl ads as they air during the game broadcast on Fox February 3.
Nielsen launched Hey!Nielsen in September 2007 as a forum for pop culture fans to exchange their views with each other. The site currently has 32,000 members.
After each commercial break throughout the Super Bowl, participants will be asked to rate each commercial on a scale from 1to 4 (most to least favorable, respectively). Participants can also add comments after each commercial break. The results will indicate how likely consumers are to use advertisers products and services in the future.
The Hey! Nielsen Super Bowl panel is essentially an online focus group that will provide our clients with immediate gut-level reactions to the ads,” said Karen Watson, Nielsen senior vice president communications, and executive sponsor of Hey! Nielsen.
Other Nielsen properties will track viewer response to the Super Bowl, including Nielsen BuzzMetrics, which will analyze in real time close to 70 million blogs, message boards, online communities, video sharing sites and sport fan sites.
Super Bowl ads are selling for as much as $2.7 million for 30 seconds of television time during the game. Some sites are featuring for free Super Bowl commercials that air during the game. MySpace is posting all of the commercials broadcast during the game on a special section of its site. YouTube, AOL and Yahoo are doing the same for their commercial polls according to the Wall Street Journal.