In Fantasy and Reality, It's a Frenzy for Football THIS time of year, Madison Avenue keeps an eye on the countdown to Christmas - 119 days until, F.Y.I. - because the fourth quarter is make-or-break for many marketers. At the same time, another countdown is being calculated just as carefully: 158 days until Super Bowl XLVIII. Football has become critical to the American advertising-industrial complex. The seemingly limitless appeal of the sport among consumers - women, increasingly, as well as men - has made it almost as crucial a delivery vehicle for commercial messages as the holiday shopping season. As agencies have been working throughout the summer on Christmas ads, they have also been developing campaigns centered on the start of the 2013-14 professional and college football seasons along with the virtual sport of fantasy football. "A lot of people ask me," said Edward J. Laukes, vice president for marketing communications and motor sports at Toyota Motor Sales U.S.A., why his company sponsors football coverage on NBC. Among the reasons he offered are that "the N.F.L. audience continues to grow." Toyota, for example, will introduce the 2014 Corolla with a 60-second musical commercial by Saatchi & Saatchi Los Angeles, part of the Publicis Groupe, that will make its debut in the Sept. 5 kickoff game between the Baltimore Ravens, who won Super Bowl XLVII, and the Denver Broncos. "A Manning brother will always draw ratings," Mr. Laukes said, laughing, referring to Peyton Manning, the Broncos quarterback. The ardor for football in all its forms is emblematic of the demand among marketers for what is known as big-event programming: shows that audiences look forward to and watch live, paying more attention to the commercials than they would if they had zapped or zipped through them during delayed viewing with digital video recorders. "There's an appetite for live sports, and football is by far the largest sport," said Tor Myhren, president and chief creative officer at the Grey New York division of Grey, part of the Grey Group unit of WPP, which created ads for Gillette Fusion ProGlide razors that will also run on Sept. 5 during NBC's broadcast of the kickoff game. "So when there's a live football game, it's more meaningful than it's ever been," Mr. Myhren said. It's one of the few things America watches in real time, together and, as a result, the airtime is very valuable. How valuable? Fox Broadcasting is selling commercials during Super Bowl XLVIII, to be played on Feb. 2, 2014, for an estimated $4 million for each 30-second time slot - or $133,333.33 per second. Although the game is more than five months away, Fox has already sold 85 to 90 percent of the commercial inventory. That is being duplicated with commercials in regular-season games before the Super Bowl, the trade publication Broadcasting & Cable reported: The inventories for those spots, too, are 85 to 90 percent sold out, on networks that in addition to Fox include CBS, ESPN and NBC. The continuing growth of fantasy football may be feeding the appetite for the sport among consumers and, by extension, marketers. You used to watch just your favorite team. Now, you have a vested interest in games in all time zones," Mr. Laukes of Toyota said. The computer maker Lenovo is celebrating fantasy football in a Web video series - its most extensive campaign to date with any football theme, the company said - that features a character, Brad Blevins, whose prowess as the owner and coach of Brad's Awesome Team brings him in contact with actual N.F.L. players like Larry Fitzgerald of the Arizona Cardinals and Andrew Luck of the Indianapolis Colts. The series, called "Tough Season," involves the DigitasLBi agency, part of Publicis; the Wasserman Media Group; and The Onion. "This gives us a great opportunity to engage millennials in a relevant voice with something that interests them, that they participate in, that's a large part of their lives," said Kevin Berman, director of advertising and marketing services for North America at Lenovo. It helps set the stage for them to hear about our brand and products. That so many marketers are eager to associate themselves with football is producing a problem: games overflowing with commercials. The crowded conditions are compounded by all the look-alike spots that are about football. "It's tough to stand out," said Chris Neel, media manager at the Clorox Company, which began this week a campaign for its Kingsford brand charcoal, carrying the theme "Grill for Game Day," that promotes tailgate parties. "You worry, "Is this going to be the year my message falls flat?" " To break through the clutter and "gain more traction," Mr. Neel advised extending campaigns beyond game coverage and into realms like social media. For instance, a character from the Kingsford campaign named Coach Carl is on YouTube and has a Twitter account where he shares his "tailgate rules" like this: "Steak steak steak steak steak steak steak. There, that's my seven-layer dip recipe. For the 2014 Toyota Corolla, said Margaret Keene, co-executive creative director at Saatchi & Saatchi Los Angeles, "we've created a ton of social and digital content" in addition to the musical commercial. John Mang, vice president of global shave care for the Gillette brand at Procter & Gamble, described football games as "a huge stage" that generates "a huge amount of awareness" for Gillette products, "which we can take to other media vehicles" that include social media like Facebook and e-commerce platforms like blade subscriptions sold by Amazon.com.