It's no surprise that not everyone watching this year's Super Bowl had a vested interest in the game's outcome.
As in years past, there's a different competition piquing interest outside the white lines: the Ad Bowl. So, here's our quick Super Bowl commercial round-up: some good, some great and some ... not so much.
We'll start strong with the good — a spirited Coca-Cola commercial rallying against hateful speech on the Internet.
As one TechCrunch writer summed it up: "I'm Not Sure This Will Actually Happen If You Spill Coke On Your Computer, But I'm Willing To Try."
Next, how about points for creativity with Fiat? Yes, just add a dose of Viagra to your Fiat and it goes, um, all beast-mode apparently.
Twitter users got a good chuckle out of that one. One said, "If the Fiat Viagra #SBcommercials make you laugh for more than 4 hrs please see a physician." Well put.
To wrap up the good, you simply cannot go wrong with a tasteful puppy commercial. Budweiser scores big by reuniting this little furry fella with his owner, and viewers loved it.
Let this be a lesson for GoDaddy, which pulled its own puppy-inspired ad at the last minute after public backlash.
Yeah, not cool, guys.
And, finally, the ugly: what's with all the sad ads? Nationwide, Nissan and Toyota, just to name a few, put up tear-jerking commercials tackling, at times, some pretty serious topics.
There was even one commercial that aired in St. Louis from the National Council on Alcoholism amd Drug Abuse that warned against using heroin by showing what appeared to be a teenager dying of an overdose.
The Nationwide ad, in particular, didn't go over well. According to a mid-game poll by Cast App, 76 precent of respondents voted Nationwide's ad the worst Super Bowl commercial in the first half.
Well, there you have it. Some good ones, some bad ones — and a surprising amount of sadness. Now, the companies just have to hope they got their monies' worth. Every 30-second ad this year cost $4 million dollars.
This video includes an image from Getty Images.
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