Hardly anyone watches the Super Bowl just for the game. As usual, there was a glut of advertising and promotional material that caught everyone’s eye during the big game. Case in point, just look at this incredible moment from Eli Manning.

In addition, more than ever, we were watching the game while simultaneously looking up things related to the event on our smartphones. Just look at this Google Trends data visualization from the halftime break:

The biggest searches aren’t even football related. In fact, though opposing quarterbacks Peyton Manning and Cam Newton were consistently trending, the most popular people of the night were the performers Bruno Mars and Beyonce Knowles, who were only there for halftime entertainment. Furthermore, when each new commercial aired the number of Google searches for the featured brands and performers rose exponentially.

All of this buzz just goes to show how much the advertisements surrounding the Super Bowl really mean to viewers.

Sourcing via Mashable. Image credit: Play It Safe.