The Super Bowl is always massively hyped, and it is so often disappointing. The same can be said of some other things that can't be talked about too directly on a family-oriented Web site.

But whatever happens in this year's game between the favored New England Patriots and the Carolina Panthers, the ad wars that typify the game could bring some relief to certain neglected wives and girlfriends--not to mention their husbands and boyfriends--as Cialis, the erectile dysfunction drug that just gained U.S. Federal Drug Administration approval in November, will air ads on Sunday's big game. In doing so, Cialis will go head-to-head with Levitra, which will show in-game ads featuring its spokesman Mike Ditka, the tough-as-nails former coach who won a Super Bowl with the Chicago Bears.

Industry leader Viagra, made by Pfizer (nyse: PFE - news - people ), will also be advertising during the Super Bowl, looking to retain its dominance of the $2 billion drug category.

Cialis, marketed by Eli Lilly (nyse: LLY - news - people ), the massive drug company, and ICOS (nasdaq: ICOS - news - people ), a more insurgent biotech firm (2002 sales: $93 million), will reportedly go with a more direct push. Its ads will feature cuddly middle-aged couples with jazz in the background. The ads will also say what the drug does: It treats erectile dysfunction. They will also, owing to legal requirements, state possible side effects such as headache, stomachache and back pain.

Viagra ads, by contrast, have tended to dance around the topic, assuming viewers know what it does--and hinting at the result in terms of the expectant happiness of the newly diagnosed who have been prescribed the pill.

"We're going to talk about what Cialis is and its advantages, and that's something our competitors have never been willing to do," Leonard Blum, ICOS vice president of sales and marketing, told The Seattle Times.

Levitra, sold by GlaxoSmithKline (nyse: GSK - news - people ) and Bayer (nyse: BAY - news - people ), will also come out during the Super Bowl, which will be shown on CBS, a unit of Viacom (nyse: VIA.B - news - people ). Its ads will feature Ditka, but the specifics of the coach's message are unknown. Ditka will join Bob Dole, Rafael Palmeiro and Pelé as pushers for erectile dysfunction drugs. The former senator, the baseball star and the soccer legend all shilled for Viagra.

The marketing budgets for the three drugs are reportedly $400 million to $500 million a year.

The erectile dysfunction spots on the Super Bowl are expected to reach nearly 90 million Americans, mostly men. A 30-second slot on the Super Bowl costs about $2.3 million. For Cialis in particular, it's one way to get known well quickly.

While the drugmakers will all be making an effort, it's less clear whether such ads really perform. In the past, the most successful Super Bowl ads have been for mass-consumer products like beer, soda and Hollywood movies. PepsiCo (nyse: PEP - news - people ) and Anheuser-Busch (nyse: BUD - news - people ), which return to the game almost every year, have proved particularly adept at using the Super Bowl as a platform. Though Pfizer says that 16 million men around the world have used Viagra, erectile dysfunction remedies are not quite in that class.

One recent study by researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire claims that Super Bowl advertising does work, at least for movies, in that those that advertise on the Super Bowl do tend to have strong opening weekends at the box office. But ad results for other products, which don't have such clear or well-known one-weekend results, are much harder to measure.

So for the drugmakers, whether they will get a similar bang for the buck remains to be seen.

Source : http://www.forbes.com