Super Bowl: The only day in America where TV viewers actually want to watch commercials. This year’s NFL championship, pitting the New York Giants against the New England Patriots, is in a sense a “rematch” of the 2008 edition of the big game. Due to this unfortunate match-up (blame Billy Cundiff and Kyle Williams for their failures), it’s possible that TV ratings could actually be lower than last year’s game. This would clearly be a total bummer for advertisers who spent $3.5 million for a 30-second spot. But, on the bright side, maybe people will be talking more about the ads than the actual game at the water cooler the next day, right?

Of course, the veritable “water cooler” has evolved in the digital age. The folks at Venables Bell & Partners have decided to provide a handy infographic that maps the who, where and how of post-game advertising conversation. Out of the bevy of stats they’ve given us, a few stand out. For example, “Almost one in five (19%) Americans searched for ads before the game in 2011, about double (11%) who did in 2010. Of that group, 48% searched for ads on Facebook, putting the site just ahead of popular video sharing site YouTube, brand sites, and media sources as the lead destination to find ads.” In other words, Facebook is becoming a more popular video search engine than YouTube, a fact than is no doubt pissing off the powers that be at Google.

Also, “Americans are almost as likely to ‘like’ a brand on Facebook that advertises during the Super Bowl (20%) as they are to ‘like’ a team (29%), with 23% of young adults likely to ‘like’ a brand.” Not a bad way to measure social media ROI compared to TV ROI, is it? Well, at least it’s somewhat “believable.” Check out a full-size image after the jump.

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