This past Superbowl was awesome, even better than last year’s. However, and this is purely subjective, the commercials as a whole were some of the worst in recent memory. There was just nothing that stood out and it felt like they had all been done before. They just completely lacked anything exciting, and at $3 million a spot, the stakes are all too high for failure. There were some good ones in the lot, but nothing great.

I would imagine you are trying to figure out why the "Interactive Insider" is talking about TV commercials. The reason is what happens after the Superbowl party is done and everyone goes home and goes to work in the morning. It is an explosion of traffic to video sites like YouTube, AOL Video and even SpikeTV to watch the commercials again and vote for everyone’s favorites. The day after the Superbowl has become such a big deal that the advertisers actually buy Superbowl keywords for people to find their commercials. Advertisers realize that people want more, and a big part of buying an ad on the Superbowl is the PR that surrounds it and the number of times people will interact with the spot. In fact, a company like GoDaddy.com uses the commercial to drive people to their site to see more of the commercial. You reach the largest television audience all at one time and then you get the added benefit of most people going online and viewing the commercials after the fact.

This all came to be because online video has truly become an important part of online engagement. People spend countless hours on YouTube, Hulu.com and many other video sites watching user-generated content as well as their favorite TV shows and movies. Online video has to some degree shifted the way some people watch TV, because now they can watch it anytime and right from their computer. The good news is that there are plenty of ways to use online video to reach your customers. You can buy pre-roll and ad pods in videos, you can buy advertising on pages around videos and you can even buy a layer on top of a video. If you’re motivated you can create your own video, but make sure it is interesting because you want people to watch it, and online video is not as passive as television­--people can easily move on to the next video! So next time you’re watching the evolution of dance on YouTube, just think, you could have your ad right next to it promoting your company or product.