Super Bowl Ads to Help Start Busy Season Coldwell Banker is buying commercial time during the Grammys and the Academy Awards. IN a world where television viewers routinely zip through or zap commercials, advertisers crave big-event television - live events that viewers watch in real time. And the power of those big events is now on display as perhaps never before. In a 50-day period, from Jan. 12 through March 2, there is a veritable orgy of advertising. Marketers are in the middle of spending $1.5 billion, by some estimates, to buy commercial time during seven major television shows. Those programs are the Golden Globes, broadcast on Jan. 12; the two championship football games last Sunday; the Grammys this Sunday; Super Bowl XLVIII on Feb. 2; the Winter Olympics; and the Academy Awards on March 2. Several blue-chip brands are sponsoring more than one of those shows. For instance, the Chevrolet division of General Motors plans to run commercials during the Grammys, to be followed by two spots in the first quarter of the Super Bowl and multiple spots during the Winter Games and the Oscars. The Chevrolet commercials are being created by Commonwealth, part of the McCann Worldgroup division of the Interpublic Group of Companies, and Leo Burnett, a unit of the Publicis Groupe. Justin Timberlake in a coming MasterCard campaign. Why do marketers covet big events like sports and award shows? They believe that viewers pay attention to the commercials because they have been conditioned to expect new, special ads worth watching during big-event television like the Super Bowl. In addition, viewers are more likely to watch ads when they watch shows live than when they play back time-delayed programming on their digital video recorders. Big-event television delivers "higher-engaged audiences who are less prone to DVR and skipping ads," said Sean Blankenship, senior vice president for marketing at Coldwell Banker in Madison, N.J., praising what he described as the "DVR-proofness" of those shows. There is also the rise of social media use during live events. Because the audiences are "interactive," he said, engaging with the programming on Facebook or Twitter, "it gives us a chance to amplify our message." Raja Rajamannar, chief marketing officer at MasterCard Worldwide in White Plains, agreed that there is "certainly a strong appeal to "big-event TV." " "Not only are they typically shows that viewers watch in real time," he said, "but they also deliver a very targeted viewing audience aligned around a specific passion point, be it sports, music or entertainment." The "strong engagement and dialogue across social media" that are typically generated by programs deemed appointment viewing "make them a powerful platform," he added. Tim Mahoney, global chief marketing officer at Chevrolet in Detroit, said, "We're in the midst of a pretty significant product offensive," referring to a dozen new models like Corvette, Malibu, Silverado HD heavy-duty trucks and Traverse. We want to convey that news and bigness. Big-event television, Mr. Mahoney said, also tends to attract "a lot of eyeballs." The Super Bowl, for example, is typically the most-watched television program of any kind each year. And the championship games last Sunday, won by the Denver Broncos and Seattle Seahawks, each drew an average of more than 51 million people. Coldwell Banker is buying commercial time during the Grammys and the Academy Awards to introduce two new spots in a campaign carrying the theme "#HomeRocks," created by Siltanen & Partners in El Segundo, Calif. The Grammys commercial will feature the Mötley Crüe song "Home Sweet Home" and the Oscars commercial will feature a voice-over by Tom Selleck. "It started last year with what we called "the blue carpet strategy," " Mr. Blankenship said, evoking the company's blue logo. "We ran ads during the "tent-pole" award events: the Golden Globes, the Grammys, the Oscars and the Emmys." Another benefit to big-event television is that it "provide the right tonality and audience for our brand," he added. It's an association with events that have legacy, quality recognition and trust, which fit our brand message well. During the Grammys, MasterCard will introduce a campaign featuring Justin Timberlake with the theme "Priceless surprises." The campaign, by McCann XBC in New York, also part of the McCann Worldgroup, includes a hashtag, #PricelessSurprises, and a teaser commercial that is to begin running on Friday. The Olympics alone, from Feb. 7 to Feb. 23, may expose viewers to up to 5,500 minutes of commercials, according to the Kantar Media division of WPP. There are usually 30 minutes of commercials during a Super Bowl, from 40-odd advertisers; some are as short as 15 seconds and others as long as two minutes. That represents a pitfall for sponsors, Mr. Mahoney of Chevrolet said, in that their commercials "run the risk of not standing out" from the crowd. Another danger, he said, is that when marketers and agencies consider producing commercials for big-event television, they may "want to make a big statement, which can potentially end up far away from where your brand is" in its regular advertising and possibly confuse consumers. Then there is the cost of sponsoring big-event TV. For instance, each 30 seconds of ad time during Super Bowl XLVIII went for an estimated $4 million. Nevertheless, perhaps in a testament to how highly desired big-event television is these days, the ad time was sold out by early December, about two months before the game. Advertisers spent $1.2 billion to buy commercials during the last five Super Bowls, according to Kantar Media data, from 2009 through 2013; they were broadcast by CBS, Fox and NBC. Advertisers spent $2.4 billion to buy commercials during the last three Winter Olympics, Kantar Media said, in 2002, 2006 and 2010, all on NBC. For the awards shows, Kantar Media reported, ad spending from 2009 through 2013 totaled $141.5 million for the Golden Globes, on NBC; $246.2 million for the Grammys, on CBS; and $381.1 million for the Oscars, on ABC.