Love In The Air: Google Runs First-Ever Super Bowl Advertisement

Google, which rarely advertises on television and has never advertised during the Super Bowl, aired a one-minute advertisement during the game's third quarter to promote the features of its search engine.

The ad, "Parisian Love," has been available on YouTube for some time where more than 1.6 million Web surfers have already viewed it.

The cute ad shows the familiar Google interface as a user asks a series of questions as he woos a woman in Paris, starting with "Study abroad in Paris, France." The ad showcases Google's features, including its translation capabilities, and helps the user answer such vexing questions as "How to impress a French girl?" and "What are truffles?"

CEO Eric Schmidt hinted in a Twitter posting last week that Google might be running an advertisement during Super Bowl XLIV's third quarter.

"If you watched the Super Bowl this evening you'll have seen a video from Google called 'Parisian Love,'" Schmidt wrote in a blog posting Sunday after the game. "In fact you might have watched it before, because it's been on YouTube for over three months. We didn't set out to do a Super Bowl ad, or even a TV ad for search. Our goal was simply to create a series of short online videos about our products and our users, and how they interact. But we liked this video so much, and it's had such a positive reaction on YouTube, that we decided to share it with a wider audience."

Google did not say how much it spent to air the ad, but CBS said the cost of airing some 30-second spots exceeded $3 million, according to a BusinessWeek story. One estimate was that Google spent $5 million to run its ad.