• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, February 8, 2013

On Super Bowl XLVII Sunday, tablets and smartphones were the second screen of choice, particularly for women, while men seemed to gravitate toward social networks.

While both genders became more active online at halftime and during the power outage, mobile device use by females spiked significantly and remained high throughout the second half of the game, per eXelate data. Male mobile device use only surged in the game's closing minutes.

Desktop computers powered way down for the big game. In fact, many turned off machines as the network began running prep commentary about an hour prior and then use began again. Brands running multichannel marketing campaigns experienced the most amount of traffic from mobile devices on their Web sites.

The football game wasn't just about beer and snacks. Audience segments show the leading interests of fans range from personal wealth management and men's fashion to flowers, jewelry and organic items.

"Although we saw an overall reduction in Internet use during Sunday's game, in our publisher network, we saw spikes in browsing significantly above levels that were typical among advertised products for the day," said eXelate SVP Analytics Kevin Lyons. "These spikes in activity were especially noticeable during the halftime show and blackout."

Advertisers saw 23% higher traffic than normal on day of the event, 46% higher on the day after the event, and the week prior to event delivered lower traffic than last year, according to Adobe Systems.

When it comes to activity on social media sites, men outnumbered women, according to Trendrr.TV, which logged more than 52 million social media interactions -- up from 17.5 million. Men outnumbered women in social game activity, 56% vs. 44%. Mobile devices dominated 88% of the activity vs. 12% on the Web.