Most football fans will be on tenterhooks until Super Bowl Sunday, Jan. 31, when the Denver Broncos and the Atlanta Falcons face off. But Douglas Stayman's students at Cornell University will wait until the week following the main event to sit on the edge of their seats in rapt concentration. That's when the Marketing Club, a student group at Cornell's Johnson Graduate School of Management, and Stayman, an associate professor of marketing at the school, will meet to analyze the ads that aired the previous Sunday.

Stayman, an expert on audience perceptions of advertising, says: "There is much debate inside corporations about whether airing a commercial during the Super Bowl -- at $1.6 million per 30 seconds -- makes financial sense. But what is certain is that these pricey spots attract the world's notice and bring a good deal of prominence and attention to a corporation."

Commercials aired during the Super Bowl can generate almost as much attention as the football game itself, according to Stayman. But the desire to be the most-talked-about commercial on Monday morning has raised the stakes significantly for ad producers and marketers. "To have your commercial get noticed, you need to create a spot that is more spectacular than the one that ran last year -- or last week," Stayman notes. "What's the point of paying top dollar if your ad gets lost in the shuffle."

Another risk for advertisers is the game itself. "If the game fails to be competitive early on, there can be significant fall off in viewership," he observes. "Advertisers whose commercials air in the fourth quarter of a lopsided game can take as much of a beating as the losing team." The reverse also can be true, however. "If the game is close, no one will be going anywhere and more people will view your commercial. It's a gamble."

Stayman and his students will examine whether the companies that invested in Super Bowl spots this year made good business and marketing decisions in doing so. They will also discuss whether this year's crop of ads were as effective as advertisers hoped.