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The Super Bowl has an average 90 million viewers every year. Many of those viewers tune in, not to watch the game, but to watch the commercials. It is the best opportunity for advertisers to reach largest amount of people at one time; the most bang for the buck as it were. Pizza Hut, Pepsi, Snickers, Budweiser, Doritos and Blockbuster were just a few companies that doled out millions of dollars for precious seconds of air time. In 2007, 30-second slots cost 2.6 million dollars, give or take a few pennies.

Snickers aired a commercial that showed two mechanics kiss each other accidentally after they started eating the same Snickers bar from opposite ends. After the kiss, they opened their shirt and ripped out their chest hair in an effort to "do something manly." Two advocacy groups, the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation and the Human Rights Campaign denounced the ad saying that it promoted anti-gay prejudice. While it did not appear to negatively affect sales, the eye opening commercial did undermine the whole point of advertisements, to sell a product.

Several different measures can determine the value and success of the money companies have spent. Asking consumers directly what they prefer is obviously one way. According to TodaysPoll.GooglePages.com, the most popular promotion was from Budweiser's Bud Light, garnishing a 35% average number of votes by both men and women. The more controversial Snickers was less popular among men than women, earning 2% and 9% of votes, respectively.

Cymfony , a marketing analytics company, analyzes coverage and discussions about Super Bowl commercials. In 2007, even before the Super Bowl aired, the Doritos campaign was the clear winner because they had reached almost 40 million people. "Everyone loves the Doritos ads... almost half of the discussions of the Doritos ads are positive and almost none are negative. At Cymfony, we almost never see this strong of positive reaction for any brand."

These measurements are subjective, however, because are not able to take into account the differences between what people say and what they actually think or do. "The traditional methods that companies use to explore consumer preferences do not always reflect actual buying patterns says Tim McPartlin, a senior vice president of Lieberman Research Worldwide in Los Angeles. Objective evidence is hard to come by when the only measurement available comes from polling consumers. When one takes into account the time and effort that is invested in each commercial, it is a company's best interests to look for an objective way to analyze the success or failure of each commercial.

Neuromarketing - the study of the brain's responses to advertisements - is an emerging technology that is beginning to change that. Scientists use fMRIs (functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging) to study the brain activity of people during an activity and comparing that data with subjective information provided by the participants.

During Super Bowl 2007, FKF Applied Research, and UCLA's Ahmanson Lovelace Brain Mapping Center monitored the areas of the brain that influence people's cognitive control centers. The results of this analysis showed that Coca-Cola's "Video Game" ad - a 60 second animated spot that promotes random acts of kindness - was the all around winner because it elicited the most positive emotions in subjects' brains." According to the study, the most successful ads for Super bowl 2007 were: "Live the Flavor" from Doritos, "Hitchhiker" from Budweiser and "Video Game" from Coca-Cola. The three least successful ads for Super bowl 2007 were: "Robert Goulet" from Emerald Nuts, "CRV Crave" from Honda and "Connectile Dysfunction" from Sprint.

The effectiveness of neuromarketing is still a matter of debate. Money and other resources naturally limit the number of participants in each study making broad conclusions less than reliable. Another problem with using fMRI as a gauge of success is that the fMRI is not able to study the complexity of the workings of the brain. fMRI can see that a part of the brain is more engaged than others, but it cannot determine what the brain does next.

Regardless of whether or not scientists and critics work out their differences on what is the best way to establish a "winner" in the Super Bowl competition for advertisers, the consumer will still be the ultimate authority. They may not buy what advertisers are selling, but they are going to love watching them try.

Learn more about this author, Piper Wilson.
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