Austin company has big ad in big game

Austin, TEXAS (KXAN) - Super Bowl Sunday was a chance to make a big splash in the advertising world and a small Austin company hoped the big price tag for airtime helps them go big.

The HomeAway company created a 30 second spot featuring America's favorite traveling family, the Griswolds.

Super Bowl morning kicked off with anticipation in the air at HomeAway Headquarters off 5th street.

A crew of 25 worked tirelessly in a technology hub to make sure their 30 second ad spot, that featured America's most infamous family, the Griswolds, went according to gameplan.

"We'll be watching all the details," said Ross Buhrdog, HomeAway's chief technology officer.  "So, we look at the incoming foot traffic and the traffic coming to the micro site for any issues."

Tension remained high, even for company bigwigs, who hosted a watch party at Molotov Lounge just blocks away.

Three months work and a lot of money rode on their ad that could've easily been missed in a blink.

HomeAway's ultimate goal was to have their ad drive traffic to their Web site.

Once on their site, people can learn about renting homes instead of staying at hotels while on vacation, among other things.

"We think that we could actually have a million visitors to the site within 60 seconds of the ad airing," said Justin Halloran, HomeAway's vice president.

With the recession, Super Bowl ads were more affordable this year than in years past.

Still, with lots of interest in the match up, party-goers who waited to see the ad air live had high hopes.

"I was excited," said HomeAway's CEO Brian Sharples.  "I saw it (the ad) many times before tonight, but tonight was by far the best.

Now that the world has seen the ad, pundits can weigh-in on whether it scored a touchdown with the public