When The Verge ran its Super Bowl ad

Nilay Patel of The Verge writes about the results of the tech news site running a Super Bowl television commercial in Helena, Montana.

Patel writes, “I had to know how this was all going to go down. So enterprising young reporter Sydne Cook hit Helena’s local Buffalo Wild Wings to record it when it aired, and then see what people thought. It was weird to watch the game in New York and know that The Verge was being advertised in Montana; the internet makes it seem like all media is a global phenomenon, but television is still intensely local. At 6:50PM, the 25,000 people of Helena, Montana, saw something that none of the 100 million other people watching the Super Bowl saw. That’s pretty wild.

“Turns out The Verge is… not yet big in Montana.

“‘I didn’t know what the commercial was about,’ said one young man with an Android phone. ‘But after watching it I am really curious about the company.’ That’s… sort of good?

“‘The commercial was really innovative,’ said 21-year-old Jordy Blaine, who has an iPhone. That’s nice. ‘Seeing the commercial made me want to download the app onto my phone.’ A crushing blow to the open web. Somewhere Dieter’s heart is breaking into a million pieces.”

Read more here.