Online recruiters have long flocked to the Super Bowl, knowing the big game comes at a time of year when millions of couch potatoes are ready to think about career opportunities amid their chips, dips, and beers. But a shuffle in this year’s ad lineup shows that ponying up for a Super Bowl ad isn’t right for every marketer.

Careerbuilder.com, which is owned by Gannett, Tribune, and Knight Ridder, is advertising on the upcoming NFL championship game for the first time. Sitting out this go-round is rival Monster Worldwide’sMonster.com, a Super Bowl perennial for years. The February 6 game will air on News Corporation’s Fox, with 30-second spots selling for $2.4 million on average.

“As the activity of searching for jobs on the Internet has matured, we wanted to make sure we were using a mainstream advertising vehicle to reach potential job seekers,” says Matthew Ferguson, Careerbuilder’s chief executive.

“There is no more mainstream advertising vehicle in the United States than the Super Bowl.” Reflecting that strategy, other Career builder ads will build on two chimpanzee-filled Super Bowl spots and appear during big-splash events such as the Oscars, as well as on “Lost” and “Desperate Housewives,” which air on Walt Disney’s ABC.

For its part, Monster seems to have had its fill of all the hoopla, shifting to local advertising and marketing instead of national ads. “The appeal of the Super Bowl is about making a broad brush, but there are better ways to penetrate the marketplace more deeply,” says Jeffrey Taylor, the company’s founder.

Yahoo’s Yahoo HotJobs, another player in Super Bowls past, has found other promotions, too, running a national sweepstakes that launches today and allows eight winners to take limited-term “dream jobs” at Campbell Soup’s Godiva Chocolatier and hip magazines, among other places. “Frankly, the brand is established,” says Daniel Finnigan, Yahoo HotJobs’ general manager. Now, the focus is on attracting job seekers who better match the jobs that employers are offering, he said.

Careerbuilder has big shoes to fill. HotJobs and Monster presented pigskin escapades that became the Coke-and-Pepsi battle of the dot-com era. Monster’s 1999 Super Bowl entry put it on the map, featuring children spouting unlikely career aspirations. “When I grow up, I want to claw my way up to middle management,” one tyke said. From just 30 seconds of ad time, job searches on the Monster site leapt 450% in the 24 hours after the game compared with the day before.

Working with a bunch of chimps is the central theme of the Super Bowl ads, developed by Chicago independent agency Cramer-Krasselt, and a viral campaign that Careerbuilder starts January 24. In a spot available via the Internet in the days leading up to the big game, a hapless employee makes excuses on the phone as simians go wild in adjacent cubicles. “I apologize. I’ll correct it myself,” he says. “It’s just that the guys I work with are a little difficult sometimes.” A similar scenario will appear in the Super Bowl ad, which hasn’t been finalized.

Career builder “is trying to present as competitive a front as they can,” said Christa Sober Quarles, who follows the industry for Thomas Weisel Partners in San Francisco. According to her estimates, Monster’s 2004 revenue totaled $586 million, Careerbuilder’s $270 million, and HotJobs’ $100 million.

Careerbuilder aims to chase – and hard. “We don’t have as much revenue. We believe that this advertising strategy, along with the other things we’re doing this year, will help us close and narrow that gap,” said Mr. Ferguson. In fact, Careerbuilder announced its Super Bowl presence in June, expecting Monster to show up. “They had been there for six years. You had to assume they’d be back for the seventh,” says Richard Castellini, Careerbuilder’s vice president of consumer marketing.

Just because there’s a switch in the ad lineup doesn’t mean the players can’t be civil. Monster’s Mr. Taylor has some tempered wishes for his competitor. “We don’t play in the same sandbox traditionally,” he said. “But good luck in the Super Bowl.”