There are a dwindling number of advertisers these days shelling out for Super Bowl commercials and leaving it at that. With recent stats showing that a huge percentage of Americans will be interacting with another device while watching the game, and that nearly half of the Super Bowl audience will share ads via social media after the game, more of those brands who deem it worthwhile to spend $3.5 million on a 30-second slot in the game (and up to a few million making a spot) are looking to extend creative engagement into social media.

For more brands, that’s meant releasing their Super Bowl spots before the game to spur conversation before and after the big event. But, beyond spot previews and beyond re-posting their ads, how are marketers using social media to extend the experience? We asked a few of the creative and brand execs who have undertaken major Super Bowl campaigns how they’re thinking about the social side of game day.

Brands like Chevrolet, Coca-Cola, and Audi are leveraging Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube in new ways this year, building multi-layered campaigns to continue the conversation beyond the big game. Advertisers who pay for a Super Bowl spot alone are “leaving a ton of money on the table,” says Lucy Farey-Jones, Partner and Head of Strategy for Audi’s agency Venables Bell & Partners (the agency also publishes a Super Bowl social media study showing game-day media habits–see below). “If you’re going to spend those millions you should really make it work for you.” And making the most of a Super Bowl campaign goes back to tailoring engagement for where consumers are.

Although a brand may have strong followings across their social media platforms, Farey-Jones warns against mass-blasting a single spot. “One of the mistakes marketers make is they put the same content out on each channel,” she says. “The biggest rule of thumb is to try and develop content that’s appropriate for each media–ideally you’re using Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook for what they’re best for.”

Chevy is doing just that and then some by sponsoring the “Road to the #SuperBowl”–a collaborative custom site from the NFL and Twitter that allows users to browse tweets from players, analysts, and fans–and also with the launch of their “Chevy Game Time App,” which quizzes users with game-related trivia for the chance to win Chevy cars and other prizes. “There’s going to be 110 million or more people watching the Super Bowl but not everyone is interested in the game itself,” says Joakim Borgstrom, creative director at Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, the agency behind the app. “Our challenge was how can we own the conversation around the Super Bowl and engage that mass audience in a significant way?” And as Chevy’s director of advertising Kevin Mayer explains, it was a matter of putting two and two together. “We know about 53% of the people who watch the Super Bowl tend to go for a party or for the ads themselves. And the other stat that really made us think was about 80% of people these days watch TV with a [tablet] or phone in their lap,” he says. “So the intersection of these two points was really the insight to creating an app like this.”

We needed to join (the conversation) in a way that was unique to Coke and at the same time in a way that wouldn’t impose on the conversation but would actually enhance it.

As a Super Bowl ad veteran, Coke’s goal this year was to outdo its previous commercials but in the digital and social media space. “We absolutely had to step up our game and join the conversation where it was happening,” says Pio Schunker, Senior Vice President of Integrated Marketing Platforms and Content for Coca-Cola, North America. “We needed to join it in a way that was unique to Coke and at the same time in a way that wouldn’t impose on the conversation but would actually enhance it.”

Agency Wieden + Kennedy hatched the idea of Coke’s iconic polar bears watching the Super Bowl and reacting to the gridiron action in real time. Schunker is hoping the bears will supplement social media conversations during game time by serving as a proxy for fans looking to rub a touchdown in a friend’s face or express frustration at a botched play. “We’re imagining people will have one or two interactions with the polar bears, love it, take a snackable piece of content from the video stream and then forward it on to their friends in their social networks,” he says. “More than anything we’re looking for the degree of engagement people have and the degree of brand affinity they have as a result.”