While consumers may think they are indifferent to Olympic sponsorships, their behavior, in fact, suggests the contrary.

Here is what we all need to remember when thinking about measuring the impact of our sports marketing investments.

All in all, I think you would argue that these games have been a success and something that NBC desperately needed. So, with Vancouver now a fond memory, there are some questions facing the media world this morning.

"Celebrities become overused when the thematic of all of their campaigns is similar and you feel like, 'Been there, seen that,'" said David Schwab, vp-managing director of First Call, the celebrity-marketing consultant division of Octagon, McLean, Va.

If just 1% of the $11 billion spent annually on sports sponsorship was channeled into sports cause marketing, that would be $110 million going to do some serious good in the world.

Making the right endorsement decisions has truly become a more complex confluence of art meeting science. And with the constant scrutiny and waning privacy that is a reality of our world today, it's a decision that requires brand investment both before and after the spokesperson is selected.

A continued devaluation of Super Bowl airtime plus the increased opportunity to broadcast make the old 1984 Apple ad seem more salient than ever. Websites, social media, and television are all on the same team now, but this is no Big Brother paradigm. The possibilities are wide open. The game is about to change.

A Super Bowl ad can reach 90 million viewers, but that does not guarantee success. Super Bowl XXXIV, which aired on ABC on Jan. 30, 2000, has infamously become known as the "Dot.Com" Bowl due to the 17 mostly rookie online or tech companies that purchased time at more than $2 million for 30 seconds.

Savvy marketers can escape this black hole of sponsorships, improving the impact of both individual sponsorships and their entire portfolio of sponsorships if they tackle three sets of issues.

There is no easy answer to the question posed by the headline of this column. Shifts in discretionary spending will become a permanent new normal for some and an aberration for others eager to resume the free-wheeling ways of just a few years ago.