• by P.J. Bednarski , Staff Writer @pjbtweet, January 20, 2016

From a business standpoint, the most interesting Super Bowl-related ad on YouTube this year might be one that, for a change, won’t be previewed ahead of time. In fact, nobody has seen it, not even the client.

YouTube will introduce Real-Time Ads, which will allow an advertiser to instantly insert an ad on Google Display Network’s two million sites. In this case, the advertiser is Wix.com, the Website-builder company that was a first-time Super Bowl advertiser last year.

This year Wix will drop in an instantly-created short ad on YouTube sites, presumably right after a big Super Bowl play (or black out, wardrobe malfunction or whatever). To create currency, the graphics or text would ideally be ripped from Super Bowl headlines that happened moments before, and reference it in some way. (As in: “Hey Janet, is that part of the act?”)

The Real Time ads have had some limited test runs--one was for Sen. Marco Rubio--and is intended to capitalize on life’s “micro-moments,” when everybody is experiencing the same thing. In theory, of course, presidential candidates could be ripe candidates for Real Time Ads that in effect could create micro-wallpapering of political messaging on YouTube sites.

And if you’re thinking of other micro-moments in our collect lives, try the Oscars, the second biggest TV audience of the year most years. This year, when the Best (White) Picture  is announced, look for a burst from Comcast, probably using its moment to hype its pay-per-view library. At a press event, Google wouldn’t name the event; the accompanying press material did.

Tara Walpert Levy, Google managing director of agency sales  disclosed the Real-Time Ads initiative in New York where, otherwise, YouTube announced the kickoff of its eighth annual AdBlitz channel, a special place on YouTube where Super Bowl ads will be on display ahead of time, if advertisers choose.  

By and large most of them do now. Just three years ago, Super Bowl ads were mainly secret before the big reveal.

One of YouTube’s big reveals at its confab was its own “How To Win Big Game Day,” a winky Super Bowl themed series this year featuring some of its big names including Hannah Hart, MyLifeAsEva and fouseyTUBE, hosted by Jake and Amir, and Flula as the “band leader.”

The same idle time that makes millions of people watch (and make) billions of minutes of YouTube Super Bowl or sports-related video created a need to count all of it, obviously. 

There are, for example, 2,000 years of football content on YouTube. And there are even 500,000 reaction videos--footage of people watching football.

There are 16 million minutes of videos showing how to apply sporty make-up--you know, people painting their faces and other things in team colors. Statistically, there 216% more of those than just a year ago. It's true.

Back to the more basic:

The YouTube viewer stats for Super Bowl ads are crazily big. Visitors watched 1,600 years worth of Super Bowl ads from the 2015 game, double the year before. Last year, 37% of the time spent watching Super Bowl ads came before the game itself. Pixability marketing research says advertisers that placed their finished ad on YouTube before the game received an average of 2.2  times more more views and 3.1 times more social shares by Monday morning than those that waited until the game to release an ad.

So for the love of god, advertisers, release your ads ahead of time so we can move on! We’re all kind of tired of the pre-release controversy.

pj@mediapost.com