I was never much of a sports fan. Nor was my family or friends. I didn’t grow up watching the super bowl, and I don’t particularly have a favorite team.

Despite all of that, the commercials for the Super Bowl have transcended the sport. I can still remember a few of them off the top of my head. Even though the popularity of the NFL has drastically declined, the hype over Super Bowl commercials is still tangible every time a Super Bowl rolls around.

And yet, despite the seeming importance of these commercials, one has to wonder if the companies even get their money’s worth from each one. A thirty second segment surely wouldn’t sell very much product, yet, companies desperately vie to grab each time slot, paying up to five million for precious air time. It is a risky gamble, and most Super Bowl commercials are forgettable and have already been long forgotten.

As the internet becomes more and more widespread, entertainment surely will speed up. The maximum allowed commercial time on Youtube is thirty seconds, and most people would want to skip through even those paltry thirty seconds of advertisement. Ads would have to become more interesting, more relevant, or simply more “out there” in order to seize the increasingly short attention span of those who entertain themselves on the internet.

Perhaps companies will have to resort to unconventional measures. Memes– widespread internet jokes– have often featured popular commercial products, such as 7up or Doritos. The cost of making a meme is nearly nonexistent, but once a meme is created, it rages across social media like a wildfire, potentially spreading a brand name faster than any commercial ever could. Perhaps, one day, memes will become the ideal way to advertise a product?

It sounds ridiculous, I know… but spending five million dollars for thirty seconds on a slowly hemorrhaging sports event also sounds ridiculous to me.