Best and Worst Super Bowl Ads
Some of the commercials during the Super Bowl were awesome, while others didn't quite make it.
For its 20th year, USA Today conducted its Super Bowl Ad Meter, a live rating system that gets viewers' impressions in real-time on game day. And, for the first time, a Snickers commercial featuring legendary actress Betty White grabbed the No.1 spot.
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White is pummeled by 20-something football players in the advertisement. Actor Abe Vigoda also gets knocked off his feet by the young players in the ad.
The No. 2 spot was seized by amateur ad man, Joshua Svoboda, a 24-year-old from Raleigh, N.C. Laura Petrecca, business reporter at USA Today, explained on "The Early Show" that every year for the last few years, Doritos has asked regular consumers to create ads and to submit them to their Web site.
Svoboda's ad shows a dog putting his dog collar around his master's neck that shocks him and allows him to get into a bag of Doritos.
Svoboda won $600,000 because the ad ranked second on the USA Today Ad Meter. If it had ranked No. 1, he would have won $1 million. Petrecca said Svoboda only spent $200 making the advertisement.
Bud Light's house of cans advertisement also scored high on the Ad Meter test, Petrucca said. The ad shows what happens when friends and family are invited over to a house made entirely of full Bud Light cans.
Petrucca said the ad was so successful because it's quirky and full of one-liners.
"Great writing in that ad," Petrucca said.
Another ad that made a splash on game day was the David Letterman, Oprah Winfrey and Jay Leno advertisement. Petrucca said it was "such a wonderful surprise."
Pulled together by Letterman, the ad features Leno and Letterman at a Super Bowl party with Oprah between the late night hosts, acting as peacemaker.
Petrucca said to shoot the advertisement, Jay Leno had to sneak into Letterman's studio, wearing a fake mustache, sunglasses and a sweatshirt so no one would notice him.
"Early Show" co-anchor Maggie Rodriguez said, "But the chin had to give him away! That was definitely my favorite."
Rodriguez said her second favorite was the Google commercial that followed a love connection through Google searches.
Petrucca said that wasn't a great rater in their test, but online it generated a lot of buzz.
The E-Trade ads with the talking babies scored high again this year, Petrucca said. However, some ads missed the mark, scoring low on the Ad Meter, including shoemaker Sketchers and Web domain seller GoDaddy.com.