As the Super Bowl nears, two things hog the headlines each year at this time.

First, oddsmakers begin to lay down lines on who will win the Super Bowl. This year, it's the New England Patriots by 14 points over the New York Giants.

Second, Go Daddy complains loudly and longly that a provocative ad it has created for the big game has been rejected. That's now past us. Go Daddy has decided to air this year's questionable ad on its web site.

That clears the way for what really matters to media buyers: how the game will perform as a vehicle for their clients' advertising.

So here’s a quick look at what media buyers need to know about the Super Bowl.

According to various reports, the average 30-second spot for the Feb. 3 game on Fox is a record $2.7 million, or 4 percent more than last year’s $2.6 million on CBS.

Some spots have sold for as high as $3 million, with media people anticipating this could be one of the most-watched Super Bowl games in history with the Patriots pushing to become the first team to ever go 19-0.

All but one commercial in the game has already been sold, according to Fox, much of it in package deals that moved last year. Those who buy in the final weeks sometimes receive price cuts, as do advertisers who buy multiple ads, but Fox says it has not had to slash prices this year.

Advertisers always pay a premium to have their ads run during the desirable first-half slots. That’s when viewers are still engaged, the game is usually still close, and the halftime beer run has not yet been made.

The debate has raged for years over whether the ad buy is worth it. In 1999 and 2000, when venture capital money was flowing into the dot.coms, it became a trendy buy, with nearly $50 million spent over those two years by startup companies.

After a long drought for web properties, 2008 could again be a strong year.

Cars.com has returned after several years of sitting out the big game, and CareerBuilder.com plans to use the game to launch a new series of ads, as does SalesGenie.com.

Go Daddy will also have a spot if Fox approves another one of the ads it has submitted. The first ad was rejected after the company refused to remove the word “beaver.” 

Several other companies are running their first Super Bowl ad or returning after a long absence, including Tide, Coca-Cola and Kraft.

Another advertiser returning to the game after a long absence is Victoria’s Secret, which may signal an end to the indecency furor that has surrounded the game since Janet Jackson accidentally bared her breast during the 2004 halftime show and a slew of raunchy ads aired.

Indeed, Justin Timberlake, who removed the bustier from the offending nipple, is set to appear in a Pepsi commercial during the game.

Some companies think the exposure of a Super Bowl ad is worth blowing a huge portion of their ad budget.

In 2005, Diamond of California bought a spot for $2.4 million to promote its fledgling Emerald Nuts brand, representing a quarter of the previous year’s ad budget, according to a report from ad buying agency Carat. But it worked, as the company credits the ad for sales of the snack food rising 56 percent that year.

Indeed, movies promoted during the Super Bowl generally achieve double the opening weekend and final box office numbers as non-Super Bowl advertised movies, according to Carat.

The Super Bowl audience is an attentive one. Carat says audience retention during Super Bowl commercials is a remarkable 99.2 percent, making it by far the top sports event of the year in terms of ad views.

There’s always much talk about Super Bowl viewership, which over the past decade has ranged from a high of 93.2 million last year to a low of 83.7 million in 1998. But in these days of increasingly fractured TV viewing, even a Super Bowl featuring a dull matchup between small-market teams will still draw an incredibly large audience.

Last year’s game more than tripled the number of total viewers for the season finale of “American Idol.” More than half of the top 10 most-watched shows in history are Super Bowls, and the game has been the most-watched TV show of the season for 12 straight years.

Beer, movies and automobiles have been the leading advertising categories since 2000. Media buyers say that will hold true again this year, with Anheuser-Busch the top advertiser once again with seven spots.

Over the past few years, the ads have also taken on new life online after the game. A-B claims that last year's Super Bowl ads received 30 million additional viewers online after the big game, and this year sites from AOL to MySpace to YouTube to USA Today will offer replays of the ads in the week following the game.