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Back in the old days - say, five years ago - you had to wait until the Super Bowl to see the ads.
But with social networks like Facebook and Twitter revolutionizing the way companies market products, the buzz around some TV spots began rising long before Sunday's Big Game.
Web links to a number of the ads, or snippets of them, are already being passed around on Facebook and Twitter.
Pepsi, which opted for a massive social media campaign instead of a Super Bowl TV commercial, was the most-mentioned advertiser in tweets, Facebook postings and blogs in the last two months, according to a study by Alterian, an Internet marketing firm. Pepsi created a Web site - www.refresheverything.com - that lets Facebook and Twitter users help decide how to distribute $20 million in charitable donations.
Pepsi's decision is a sign of the times, said Keith Tsang, an Alterian official who helped produce the report.
"In the past year or so social media has really exploded into the mainstream," he said. "It's certainly new, it's certainly hot, and there's a lot of people on there. It gives brands a chance to have a two-way conversation" with customers.
Much of the chatter on social networks involves one person finding out about something interesting, then passing along Web links - and their opinions - to their friends. Companies offer Facebook "fan" pages for their products, and monitor Twitter to see what people are saying about them.
Get enough people saying positive things about your company or product on social networks, and it becomes its own form of viral advertising.
A Friday afternoon Twitter search for chatter about Super Bowl ads turned up nearly 40 tweets in which Charlotte-area people weighed in about TV spots they'd seen.
A Doritos commercial in which a boy slaps a man for eating his chips drew multiple mentions from local Twitter users. So did the pro-life ad featuring former Heisman Trophy winner Tim Tebow and his mother, Pam, sponsored by the Colorado-based Christian group Focus on the Family.
The controversial ad, which hasn't aired yet, reportedly will highlight Pam Tebow's decision not to abort her son, despite doctors' advice that a tropical illness she contracted on a mission trip made the pregnancy a dangerous one.
"If Tim Tebow's Super Bowl ad was promoting a fundamentalist Muslim agenda," one critic tweeted, "America would be up in arms."
But others posted links to a Washington Post column headlined "Tebow's Super Bowl ad isn't intolerant; its critics are."
Joe Restivo, a manager with a Charlotte Internet marketing firm called ebased Evolution, posted a link to a story about Pepsi's campaign.
Restivo, perhaps not surprisingly, applauded the company's big investment in social media. He said he tweeted about the story because he hopes Pepsi's decision shows local businesses - his potential clients - how powerful social networks can be for getting the word out.
"People are on (social networks) all day," he said. "It just makes sense to go where people are instead of making them find you."
