Marketing experts know that people watch the Super Bowl ads. We know people across all demographics watch and dissect those ads, which is why today’s media is full of stories praising, trashing, and reviewing the ads that ran during Super Bowl XLV. Ads that ran for roughly $3 million per thirty seconds, on top of production costs. We also know that with early overnight ratings projections of 47.9/71, this may have been the most-watched TV show in history.

Naturally, we had the usual plethora of beer and junk food ads (decent, but nothing memorable), movie previews (how is Super 8 not Cloverfield redux?), car and truck spots (loved the Chrysler/Eminem spot), and a few companies that you may or may not have heard of (but nothing approaching the glorious money-wasting days of the tech bubble) who plunked down their dollars and their creativity in the hopes of advertising immortality.

But what about the gaming ads?

Amidst all the ads, there was not a single video game promo run during the Super Bowl. During the single biggest mass audience of the year, not a single developer, publisher or manufacturer saw fit to promote their upcoming products, whether something that’s imminent or months away. Game companies have traditionally shied away from Super Bowl advertising, but with the gaming industry coming nearer and nearer to the forefront of entertainment mediums, if makes you wonder when the industry will put on its big boy pants and say “we belong here”.

Because that’s the truth of Super Bowl advertising. It’s only partially about product or brand awareness. For some companies, it’s about being on the big stage, sharing a platform with the titans of media buying like Coca Coka, Anheuser Busch, Chevrolet and others. The Super Bowl has a cache as being where the big brands advertise. And yet the gaming industry, which has plenty of big brands to choose from, is absent.

Maybe you’ll argue that we’re in a bit of a dead zone calendar-wise for video game releases, but so is the movie industry. That didn’t stop studio executives from writing big checks to purchase high profile spots for Thor, Captain America, Battle: Los Angeles, Cowboys and Aliens and even something called Limitless. If the backers of Limitless can come up with $3 million to run an ad, are you telling me Microsoft couldn’t do the same for Gears of War 3? Or Kinect? Or anything?

Maybe you’ll argue it’s a money thing. Are you telling me that the Sony mothership has the money to promote its uninspiring Sony Ericsson gaming phone, but no money to promote the PS3, the PSP2 (which should be both better and a bigger seller than the Experia Play), or any of their big 2011 first party titles like Killzone 3 or Uncharted 3? Why didn’t Kevin Butler, the greatest thing in gaming advertising today, make an appearance?

Sure EA’s accountants say they lost $300 million last quarter, and they didn’t exactly pick a winner in backing Dante’s Inferno during last year’s Super Bowl, but do they have nothing upcoming that they could have put money behind? The Knights of the Old Republic MMO? Mass Effect 3? The whole of EA Sports?

Activision, you can hire Eminem, Rihanna, Usher, N.E.R.D., Chris Cornell, Jane’s Addiction, et al. to marginally entertain an oddly mixed E3 crowd, but won’t pony up to start the Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3 hype machine? Or World of Warcraft. Or frankly anything. Call of Duty: World at War generated over $300 million in sales in its opening weekend, and millions more since. That’s more that any of the above named movies will do, yet they are represented and Call of Duty wasn’t.

And Nintendo. Dear sweet “It prints money” Nintendo. With a hardware product launch only weeks away, you didn’t think this would be a fantastic opportunity to put the 3DS front and center in the minds of consumers? Didn’t think that maybe promoting your next mass market product to the massest of audiences would be a good idea?

Or how about this for something novel. Nintendo, Sony, Microsoft, and a handful of developers work with the ESA to create one all encompassing “Video Games are awesome” ad that stakes out video gaming’s turf as the only entertainment medium that matters.

As a video gamer, I want to get as excited about what’s coming out as movie fans get and to see someone in the industry step up and say that gaming is as legitimate and popular a business as the other Super Bowl advertisers. It’s a huge disappointment that the gaming industry seems to have fumbled the opportunity like Rashard Mendenhall on a crucial fourth quarter possession.