by Piper Wilson

Created on: September 01, 2007   Last Updated: December 12, 2008

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

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