It’s been a while since I saw something that really needed to be covered, and been immensely busy.

I came across this genius piece of technology and advertising this morning and just had to share.

So before you get to watch the video you have to watch an ad, nothing ground breaking there. What is a terrific idea is giving customers the choice of selecting which ad they do get served. I think this is terrific as a consumer who targets the ad they will be watching is likely going to be more receptive to the ad.

I’m sure this idea has been around for a while but seeing it on a mainstream site like MSNBC is great. It shows that media execs are starting to try and unlock a solid revenue stream online, something that will be necessary if we’re ever to transition media to the web.

If you had asked who was the big winner the day after the Super Bowl I’d have said the Saints, but now we can see the real winners were Snickers and Betty White.

Hungry for a Good Commercial Grab a Snickers

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Somehow Snickers managed to call out a young man in a commercial for performing like he was an old woman and get everyone to laugh at it. On the face this could be the type of comment that could lead to a backlash against the product itself with certain demographics (specifically women) finding the joke offensive. The inclusion of Betty White set the right tone, and turned this commercial into one that will be remembered for quite some time.

For some context:

Facebook has Spoken

Drew Brees the face of the Saints who defied all odds since coming to New Orleans, and managed to lead his team to victory in the Super Bowl.  Yet, Mr. Brees has lost to another improbable face on Facebook.

It’s incredible that Betty White’s write-in campaign has almost 200,000 more fans than Drew Brees, on a site that isn’t even really endorsed or affiliated with the celebrity.

YouTube has Spoken

The most watched video associated with Drew Brees has managed to reach over 909,000 views. The Snickers commercial from the Super Bowl managed close to 1.2 million views.

What’s it All Mean?

There seem to be a lot of engaged potential customers out there for Snickers. The use of a celeb who would likely fall onto the B-list any other week, seems to have been the right choice. The ad campaign seems to have elevated their brand and likely at a pretty manageable cost.

The cost of a Super Bowl commercial is between $2-3 million which gets you in front of 153 million sets of eyes. This large of an audience can’t be ignored, but the impression on the audience is pretty fleeting when you consider they’ve only been served the commercial once alongside dozens of others.

To have the campaign take on legs like it has under the Betty White petition is a wonderful side benefit, that couldn’t have been expected but now can’t be ignored. The question now to marketers everywhere is how can this sort of buzz be replicated without alienating the community it’s feeding off of?