Before we let the Super Bowl pass, there was interest in two more bylines.

In a piece for MarketingProfs, I wrote about five commercials that would've been better with a mobile element. That article is here bit.ly/AFweTf

For Mobile Marketing Watch, I discussed the missed opportunities. http://www.mobilemarketingwatch.com/2012-super-bowl-ads-missedopportunitiesga...

It's now time to put away the cleats for another year.

Each year, I write a piece for Mobile Marketer on the use - or lack of use -- of mobile in the Super Bowl telecast.

My new byline follows:

“Please - ad with mobile call to action leading to millions joining database. #superbowl #brandbowl”—Tweet from the author, sometime late in the first half of Super Bowl XLVI

For each of the past three years, I have played Monday-morning quarterback with a day-after column for Mobile Marketer looking at mobile elements of Super Bowl ads. 

Despite a huge, captive audience that actually eagerly anticipates these commercials, for mobile marketers, the overarching theme has been “missed opportunities.”

But going into Sunday’s Patriots-Giants tilt, 2012 looked to be the year that Super Bowl viewing went from passive to active:

• Nearly 60 percent of mobile users planned to look at or use their phones or tablets during this year’s Super Bowl, according to a survey from Harris Interactive

• Chevrolet launched a tablet and smartphone application designed to run throughout the game and add interactivity to their ads

• Rumors were flying that more than half of the Super Bowl ads would be Shazamable—which is apparently now a word, “the ability to be identified using the ‘Shazam’ mobile app,” syn. “Shazam-enabled”)

• A more informal bellwether—on Twitter, a colleague predicted the over-under on mobile calls-to-action would be 10

Despite the optimism, just as the New York Giants once again delivered disappointment to Patriot Nation, once again mobile marketers were left feeling a little empty at the end of Super Bowl XXVI. Another year of “anticipointment,” perhaps.

Yes, there were more calls-to-action than ever before – particularly hashtags, which debuted in Audi’s 2011 Super Bowl Spot.

This year, by my count, nearly half the ads included a hashtag – some relevant, many fanciful (Audi’s #solongvampires, JetBlue’s meta humor #hashtagoverload).

I also counted more than a dozen spots featuring “Shazam” – which was useful for engaging customers if they have a smartphone, if they have Shazam downloaded , if they are sitting close enough to the TV, if have the Shazam application open and if they see the small call-to-action on the screen. There’s a lot of if’s there.

Most ads also featured suggestions for viewers to visit Web sites or Facebook pages, too.

Each of these calls-to-action were designed to drive a consumer to interact with a brand—with limitations.

Twitter hashtags and Facebook pages allow them to comment on a specific ad spot or maybe even a brand, but in a one-to-many sort of way. 

Shazam is hampered by the requirements I mentioned above, and even if those are overcome, still require the user to click through from the app to a landing page. And Web sites, well, that would have been cutting edge during the dotcom-heavy Super Bowl of 2000 … maybe.

None of these calls-to-action provided marketers with a key element—an easy means to create and continue a one-on-one conversation between brand and customer, with highly relevant content delivered on their most personal device.

By my count, there were two advertisers who used mobile to create a conversation—with mixed results: the NFL (SMS) and GoDaddy (QR code):

• The NFL’s spots had all the ingredients of a great ad—humor, the chance to win big prizes, and an SMS-based “call to action”—but failed miserably on the execution. I texted in during the first half—and heard nothing back … for more than five hours. Calls-to-action are about the instant gratification of a response, not a text back in the middle of the night.

• GoDaddy included a QR code on the latest in its series of ads to encourage viewers to visit their site for their latest series of racy “too hot for TV” advertisements. Theoretically, a great idea and a good way to capture customers who opt in – if consumers just happen to have their QR scanner fired up and aimed at the TV set during the seconds it appeared on screen.

Just like the past few years, there were so many missed opportunities.

Fiat’s ad had all the ingredients of a great spot: innuendo, twists and a fast car. But it could have built a database of opted-in potential customers willing to exchange their information for access to a longer director’s cut of the ad.

Budweiser’s Facebook call-to-action for aiding rescue dogs was a nice touch for a worthy cause—but an SMS prompt for interested participants to opt-in could have benefited beer sales and animals alike.

As far as my colleague’s prediction on 10 mobile calls to action? Bet the under. For mobile marketers, it was another year of anticipointment.

Like Tom Brady’s heave to the end zone on the game’s final play, my plea for an ad with a mobile call-to-action leading to millions to opt into a marketer’s database came up empty.

MediaPost's Steve Smith asked me what I thought about the mobile components in the Super Bowl spots.

From his article:

"Short-code callouts were few, as many marketers seemed to understand that it is difficult for the fleeting mention of a six-digit number and keyword to register with viewers. Yet a spot advertising the NFL Fantasy game and a $1 million sweepstakes entry had a persistent call to action on screen: send “NFL” to 69635. Unfortunately, as several mobile executives noted, NFL did not respond quickly in acknowledging the entry. In fact, it took hours for our entry to get a 2 a.m reply.  Likewise for Jeff Hasen, CMO of Hipcricket, who told us: 'That's unforgivable when viewers are looking for instant gratification.'

"In our spot check among mobile marketing execs paying close attention to the use of the platform this year, most were underwhelmed. Annual mobile Bowl-watcher Hasen says that while marketers didn’t ignore mobile this year, as they have in the past, the execution was uncertain. Audio ID app Shazam allows users to tag about half of the Super Bowl ads, but Hasen says 'how many knew enough to use Shazam remains a question. With about half the ads including the Shazam prompt, no one spot stood out for including it.' He concludes that despite the hashtags and second-screen schemes, 'my takeaway is one of anticipointment.'”

Read more: http://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/167247/anticipointment-mobile-e...

Final questions on my mind in the hours before the Super Bowl telecast:

With reportedly half of the Super Bowl spots including a Shazam call to action, will it be advantageous to have a later ad once the concept is discovered by viewers?

Conversely, will advertisers with later appearances suffer from Shazam fatigue?

How will brand managers judge the results of ads that include a mobile component?

How much activity needs to come from the more than 100 million viewers for mobile to be deemed successful?

Will more use the mobile web or mobile apps?

Will an advertiser unveil a call to action that leads to an opt-in database?

Will mobile finally break through this telecast or will it be another year of anticipointment?

We'll finally have some answers later today.

Andrew Berg from Wireless Week talked to me about mobile and the Super Bowl telecast.

From his story that ran today:

While you'd be forgiven for thinking that football is the name of the game on Super Bowl Sunday, you'd also be wrong. It's actually advertising. Advertisers will pay almost $3.5 million for a 30 second spot during their year's big game. Is it worth it? That's debatable. But consider that last year's game saw $10.2 billion dollars in consumer spend, according to research from iProspect. For some comparison, Cyber Monday drove $1.25 billion in consumer spend last year.

While it's taken some time to integrate mobile with those flashy Super Bowl ads, every year more advertisers supplement their pricey air time with short codes and calls to action. Admittedly, success for mobile has varied, but there's no denying that viewers have their devices on them during the game. iProspect discovered that 85 percent of search queries during Super Bowl XVLV came from mobile, and Super Bowl searches increased 122 percent from 2009 to 2010 and additional 33 percent increase from 2010 to 2011.

Jeff Hasen, chief marketing officer for Hipcricket, is upbeat in his expectations for mobile during this year's Super Bowl.

"I think we're likely to look back and say that this was the year that Super Bowl viewing went from being passive to being interactive," Hasen said, adding that it should have happened years ago.

Hasen comes to the Super Bowl with a cautious optimism, which is then tempered with a gentle bit of skepticism. He'll be looking for the effectiveness of the mobile campaigns, which he says need to be designed with one key fact in mind: It's a party.

For instance, Hasen has heard that over half of the TV spots during the game will be "Shazamable," meaning there will be a call to action for viewers to use their phones to "Shazam" an ad and get additional content or offers. "That's a good thing because you're interacting with consumers," Hasen says (this is the cautious optimism), "but I do have some questions about whether that's the right environment to do Shazam." You can guess that the last bit is the gentle skepticism.

Hasen says in the past, advertisers have been reluctant to include calls to action during the party atmosphere of a Super Bowl. Who wants to grab their phone and dial a short code or Shazam something, while they're dashing back and forth between the TV, the bathroom and the snack table?

It's not that calls to action can't be successful, it's just a matter of when, and Hasen hopes it's this year. "We've got a lot of buildup and a lot of buzz that this is going to be the year of mobile with the Super Bowl, and I just want to it to be the year that it succeeds, where mobile proves to those who might not be believers that it really is the right way to go."

The ways that a company can integrate mobile with their traditional TV spots are growing. GoDaddy will feature a QR code in their steamy new Super Bowl ad (preview below) that will take viewers to another version of the spot on their mobiles. And yet, Hasen says traditional SMS and short codes remain among the most effective ways to use mobile as a compliment to other channels.

"With a QR code, you might have a lot of people that don't have the right scanner. We're big believers at Hipcricket of giving people multiple ways to engage," Hasen said, "so you might give them an SMS, a QR, or you might drive them to a mobile website."