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SALT LAKE CITY -- New Orleans wasn't the only place watching the Saints upset the Indianapolis Colts Sunday night.
More than 106 million people tuned in to Super Bowl XLIV, and the record-breaking audience was exposed to the largest amount of time devoted to advertising in Super Bowl history.
Many viewers watch the ads as closely as the game. That's definitely true for folks in the advertising industry.
Local ad execs say the best ads are often the ones which unite humor with some relevant point about the product they're selling.
Best and Worst Super Bowl Ads- Richter 7
| Category | Winner |
|---|---|
| Most Valuable Ad Award | Snickers - ‘Game' featuring Betty White |
| Best Low Budget Award | Google - ‘Parisian Love' |
| Celebrity Sack Award | Taco Bell - ‘It Rocks It Rocks' featuring Charles Barkley |
| Championship Chuckle Award | truTV - 'Troy "Punxsutawney" Polamalu' |
| Illegal Use of $$$$ Award | Census - ‘Snapshot of America' |
| Creative Fumble Award | Emerald Nuts & Pop-Secret - ‘Awesomer' |
| Should Have Punted Award | GoDaddy - All of them! |
USA Today's AdMeter ranking put a Snickers ad, featuring Betty White, at the top of the list.
It rated highly with advertising executives here in Utah, too.
Jeff Bagley, creative director at Riester, said, "The acting was so fabulous and it made you laugh, and it really related to the product. A lot of the ads I saw last night were trying to be funny, but they didn't seem to have any relation or relevance to the product they were selling or to a product point."
Executive Vice President Peggy Lander of Richter7 agrees. "The best ads leave you with a good feeling, but also you remember who the advertiser was," she said.
Related:
Super Bowl sets record with 48 minutes of ads
Commercials took up nearly 48 minutes of the Super Bowl-- nearly 3 minutes longer than last year's total, the previous record holder.Another favorite: Anheuser-Busch's sentimental spot about a steer who crashes through a fence to be with his friend, a Clydesdale.
Local ad execs also raved about a clever ad for Google, which zeroed in on key moments in life.
"It was just a great engaging demonstration spot of their product," Bagley said. "I thought it was brilliant."
Another highlight: a Doritos ad showing a dog putting his shock collar around his owner's neck in order to get the bag of Doritos chips.
The ad, created for $200 by a 24-year-old amateur in North Carolina, won him $600,000 for ranking second in USA Today's list.
Ad experts say the best ads make a connection.
"You watch an ad, it touches your heart or it makes you laugh, it has some entertainment value," said Lander. Worst of the list, according to our local specialists, anything from GoDaddy.com.
Commercials took up nearly 48 minutes of the game -- the most for any Super Bowl. And there was an unusual number of shorter 15-second ads. A 30-second spot this year cost between $2.5 million and more than $3 million.
E-mail: jdaley@ksl.com
