When Madison Avenue starts Halloween advertising before Labor Day and Christmas advertising before Halloween, it ought to come as no surprise that marketers are already talking about advertising during Super Bowl XLIX, though it is still 86 days away.

There have also been reports about other potential Super Bowl advertisers like McDonald’s, which, according to an article in The Wall Street Journal, will use the game to bring out a major new campaign meant to address a serious sales slump. (The company said it would be speculative to talk now about next year.)

And Visa – a sponsor of the NFL that occasionally advertises during Super Bowls – sent emails to cardholders this week through member banks like Bank of America as part of a promotion to “win a trip to Super Bowl XLIX, courtesy of Visa.”

The front-running of Super Bowl hoopla is partly a result of holiday creep and partly of the popularity of social media like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. They make it much easier to discuss and share Super Bowl spots well before the game, which encourages advertisers to speak up sooner than they did in previous years. Another reason it makes sense to stimulate word of mouth for Super Bowl spots before Thanksgiving is the hefty sums involved: Given how much the commercials cost, it may never be too soon to start amortizing the expense. According to the trade publication Variety, NBC is seeking about $4.5 million for each 30 seconds of commercial time during Super Bowl XLIX – a record sum that is 12.5 percent higher than the estimated $4 million charged by Fox Broadcasting this year for 30-second spots during Super Bowl XLVIII.

NBC has so far kept mum about its Super Bowl ad rates and declined to discuss a report, also by Variety, that the network had already sold 70 percent to 80 percent of the commercial inventory in the game. NBC executives may soon, however, be more forthcoming with details.

How NBC fares with the pace of sales and the prices charged is being watched perhaps more closely than such matters usually are for two reasons. One is to gauge whether the NFL is suffering any lingering aftereffects from the recent uproar over domestic violence by players and the league’s reaction to their behavior. The other reason is a recent softening in demand for commercial time on television, as shown by the third-quarter financial reports of media companies like Discovery Communications and 21st Century Fox.

Although the Super Bowl is typically the most-watched television program each year – and usually the only show that generates anticipation for commercials among viewers – it is not immune to the larger forces that affect the ad sales market. So if demand in general is slack, it means that spots in the game could take longer to sell, and could sell at lower prices, than during boom times for television ads.

Despite the U.S. economy being “reasonably strong,” said Richard Greenberg, an analyst at BTIG Research, “across the board, TV advertising is just soft.”

“Something’s going on,” Greenberg said this week in remarks during the annual Video Everywhere conference sponsored by the Digital Place Based Advertising Association. “Engagement with TV is falling.”

Greenberg attributed the “weak” results for television ad sales to changes in behavior such as viewers becoming accustomed to watching programming without commercials on streaming video services like Amazon Prime Instant Video and Netflix.

“Does binge viewing drive live viewing?” Greenberg asked rhetorically. “Or does binge viewing drive more binge viewing?”

It could be that “we’re training consumers to avoid ads,” he said.

Joining Super Bowl advertisers in starting the countdown to the game early is a media-literacy organization, the Lamp, that encourages students to take a more critical perspective on advertising. The Lamp sponsors an annual event at a YMCA in Manhattan, Break the Super Bowl, where students can deconstruct the commercials and produce revised versions that rectify what are deemed questionable marketing techniques.

“The kids love it,” said D.C. Vito, executive director of the organization. “It’s not just a matter of re-editing commercials. It’s about thinking critically about ads. Find an ad with a gender stereotype and win a pair of headphones.

“We’re trying to have more students at more sites,” he added, and the group is considering expanding into examining the commercials during other so-called big event television shows like the Academy Awards and the MTV Video Music Awards.

© 2014 The New York Times Company