Seth Rogen, seated in a car alongside Paul Rudd, was merely posing a rhetorical question, and perhaps unwittingly summed up a burgeoning trend in Super Bowl advertising.

"We're doing a teaser?" Rogen, potato chips in hand, asks his longtime screen pal. "For the commercial? We're teasing commercials now?"

Indeed, Seth. In fact, almost everybody's doing it.

While Super Bowl Sunday remains one of the few audience-proof live television events — more than 100 million viewers are expected to tune in for the Los Angeles Rams-Cincinnati Bengals matchup — there is also a fine line advertisers must walk as they invest $6 million to $7 million for 30 seconds of airtime.

Do you keep your concept under wraps, hoping for a major game-day splash from blindsided viewers? Or, as means of media consumption continue proliferating, sow the seeds of awareness early with a multi-platform blitz while aiming to maximize your buy?

Brands old and new have opted for the former, with some not laying their cards on the table until game day. Others, such as Toyota and a star-studded cast of Joneses or Rogen’s Frito-Lay, view the Super Bowl ad more like connective tissue, tying together a campaign that preceded the game — and will continue after the confetti falls.

"What we found is that when we release these little nuggets — particularly for brands like Doritos — fans really love it," says Rachel Ferdinand, senior vice president and chief marketing officer for Frito-Lay America. "And we are our fans' biggest fans. We focus on that as a philosophy. We find that when we give these nods toward what's coming, it creates a lot of excitement and anticipation. There's both art and science to that.

"How do we tease it in a way that gives them some clues, but also the next chapter brings something surprising and exciting?"

In bringing Lays back into the big-game ad world for the first time in 17 years, the brand enlisted Rudd and Rogen, whose cinematic collaborations stretch nearly two decades, to "Anchorman" and "The 40-Year-Old Virgin." The spot leans heavily on nostalgia, as they trace fictional points in their friendship, backed musically at one point by Shania Twain.

Pringles, too, takes viewers on a sentimental journey, traveled by an untitled character who gets the potato chip's iconic cylindrical container stuck on his hand — why waste any? — and, rather than painfully remove it, proceeds on life's journey with it permanently attached.

A social media hashtag — #PringlesCanHand — serves as the campaign's lead blocker.

"How do you get people to anticipate what you're going to do on that night?" asks Gareth Maguire, senior director of marketing for Pringles. "You do it by tweeting about the challenges people have had eating Pringles in the past. There's an element of bringing in the fans early so they get an inkling of what you're going to do."

The sense of urgency is somewhat heightened by the NFL's ever-expanding calendar. The league added a 17th game this season, and the Feb. 13 date for Super Bowl 56 is the latest ever. (For some perspective, the Bengals' most recent Super Bowl appearance was played on Jan. 23, 1989).

Super Bowl ads have long been viewed as tone-setters for a corporation's annual objectives. And six weeks is a long time to keep an initiative parked.

So the brands take to the socials. Maguire says Pringles' current campaign has received a significant crowd-sourced boost from the most youthful-skewing platform.

"TikTok isn't about us pushing stuff out there," he says. TikTok is about using people who are really good on the platform and them doing the work for you. We've seen fantastic creative out there — someone else might film the glow in the can, and we ask can we use (your content) and they say, yeah!

"TikTok is a fantastic, creative community. You go on TikTok and see what other people have created and you say, 'That would be a nice story. Can we upload that to our page?'"

TikTok's emergence adds yet another medium with which to splice up content, and tailor to specific tastes. Pringles' full-length ad is 90 seconds — "We are going to tell a beautiful story," says Maguire — yet it will be condensed to a 30-second slot for the broadcast.

Meanwhile, many heavy YouTube or TikTok users are used to a far different length — 10 to 15 seconds — before they move on.

Yet for all the teases and shorter cuts, the fact remains that the vast majority of viewers will see the ad and its concept for the first time on game day. According to the Frito-Lay Snack Index, 16% of consumers said they plan to watch the commercials on social media before the game, compared to 96% who do plan to watch commercials in full on the game broad.

"What's the strategy behind it?" asks Daniel Blake, Budweiser vice president of marketing. "For us, we're not approaching the Super Bowl so much as a traditional advertisement. This is a campaign, a broader message for us where we are trying to unify the country around this core American tenet of resiliency."

And also snacks and booze.

SNAC International, which bills itself as "the only snack-centric trade association," reports that snack food sales during 2021 Super Bowl week jumped 12.5%, or $487 million. Frito-Lay, with Rogen and Rudd and Megan Thee Stallion under its various umbrellas, is hoping for a similar surge this week.

Even if the main course is still on Sunday.

"What we see is an increase in consumer engagement leading into it," says Ferdinando. "And the big reveal on game day is when we see our high."