According to USA Today, advertising tracking website AdMeter.co.uk announced a line-up best commercials based on their data.

With many of the funniest spots making the list, the top spot, however, belongs to a very talented baby and his (or her) annoyed grandmother.

In the commercial a young boy proceeds to taunt the the grandma and innocent baby with a bag of Doritos from across the way in the safety of his club house. The grandmother, sick of the boy’s dastardly teasing, decides to make use of the baby’s bouncy swing. She then takes up the child, throws her power wheelchair in reverse and launches the baby across the yard. The whipper snapper nabs the bag from the hands of the surprised boy then returns safely to the porch to enjoy the snack with grandma.

We put out a list of our top five best Super Bowl ads and the comments make it abundantly clear – the average consumer has vastly different notions of what makes these ads good. Taking a look at the Super Bowl admeter on USA Today provides a good measure of what consumers thought were the best ads. This is important to advertisers as the average consumer is there number one target. This should helps them refine their ads for the next year’s game.

What makes a good super bowl ad? What do you look for when you’re rating your personal favorites? Let us know in the comments.

Looking at the admeter, the top five ads all have a common theme – humor. People love to laugh. Ace Metrix seems to agree rating the top 10 most effective ads with the most effective being the ones based around humor.

The two ads that scored the highest tying for first place with a 671 Ace score was the M&M’s “Just My Shell” ad and Doritos “Sling Baby” ad. Filling the rest of the top five are humor-based ads that appeal to consumer’s base instinct to laugh.

The CEO of Ace Metrix, Peter Daboll, confirms this by saying to Forbes that humor was the most effective advertising strategy at this year’s Super Bowl which is confirmed by so many ads trying to be funny.

Daboll says that animals go hand in hand with humor as Coca Cola’s polar bear ads both ranked in the top 10. Doritos and Skechers both used dogs in their Super Bowl ads that catapulted both companies into the top 10 ads as well.

Not all ads are created equal though, and not all ads are intended effect to make people laugh. Serious ads that get the attention of viewers on something that they can relate to, such as the current financial landscape, can get people interested in products. Chrysler’s “It’s Halftime America” ad scored well at sixth place with an Ace score of 633. GE’s “Building Something Big in Louisville” got tenth place with an Ace score of 600.

Daboll calls it the “Made in America” ad that connects especially well with men. These kind of ads really “connect with the American people” in a way that the humor-filled ads cant. He goes on to say that these ads can “deliver a serious, emotive message and connect with viewers during the Super Bowl.”

He also points to the success of longer than usual ads that he calls “storytelling” ads. The Chrysler and Volkswagen ads both nailed this effectively by lasting more than the usual 30 seconds without losing interest of viewers.

Looking at the reaction to the ads across social media platforms reveals totally different results. While the H&M David Beckham underwear ad performed poorly with an Ace score of 450, the ad was the number one on social media platforms garnering a whopping 108,914 comments across all major social media platforms according to Bluefin Labs. Bluefin gathered their data in a 45-minute window after each ad aired to provide a fair estimate of how they do since the ads will most likely get more exposure over the coming days.

Compared to the Ace Metrix score, the Bluefin scores may be less effective as they just measure the comments. Comments can be negative and negativity usually outperforms anything else when it comes to online comments. Still, bad press is better than no press so H&M can take that as a sign that at least people were talking about their ad even if they didn’t like it. Unruly research shows brand recommendation as being an effective tool and social media provided that during the Super Bowl.

There is a third metric to consider when rating these ads’ effectiveness. After last year’s Volkswagen ad that premiered before the game garnered more than 90 million views over the past year, other advertisers wanted to cash in on that exposure. Honda’s Ferris Bueller ad has gotten over 18 million views on YouTube since its release with Volkswagen’s new Star Wars ad getting over 17 million views. Both ads used a teaser that led up to the actual ad that boosted their effectiveness.

AutoTrader and Edmunds.com both showed an even newer form of ad effectiveness as well through search and Web traffic. They rated auto ads by how much search and Web traffic they received during the game confirming that ads don’t necessarily have to be crowd pleasers to be big winners. While AutoTrader’s graph shows that search for vehicle models boomed during their respective advertisements; Edmunds.com’s research shows Web traffic to a specific model increased dramatically once its ad aired.

AutoTrader and Edmunds clash with the Ace Metrix numbers as well. Ace is showing that Fiat, while getting the most Web traffic according to Edmunds.com, was seventh in overall auto ad effectiveness.

Once again, as evidenced by our own picks, Super Bowl ads are different for everybody. It’s becoming harder and harder for businesses to pinpoint exactly what ads were effective or not. There are so many metrics and scores that advertisers can go off of that it makes it hard to tell where a company went wrong. While the Ace score can be a good indicator, other ad watch groups show that social media can go in the completely opposite direction.

It doesn’t seem like there’s any one way to really tell whether or not an ad was effective at this year’s Super Bowl. The best bet is to use the USA Today admeter as it’s directly from consumers voting on the ads they liked and combine that with the results from ad firms like Ace Metrix and Bluefin.

With so many different metrics to choose from, should advertisers look to all of them or stick to traditional metrics like Ace? Let us know in the comments.

As a final piece of wisdom, almost all studies confirmed that sexy just doesn’t really work unless you’re David Beckham. Sorry, GoDaddy, maybe you should try something else next year.

Take a look at our picks below and compare them to the researched best picks. There is a massive difference in opinion here, but it serves to show that Super Bowl ads are completely subjective and tastes change. While humor remains a strong contender, what people find funny is going to change year after year. There may even be a year where viewers want more “storytelling” ads with a serious topic.

Our picks confirm what this research has shown us – one man’s, or ad firm’s, picks do not exclusively determine what the best ads are anymore.

Here’s our picks for the top five best Super Bowl ads in no particular order:

Pepsi’s ad seemed to please scoring a 628 Ace score. The ad nails all the important parts of a good ad – great celebrity casting, a fun premise and good music. Check it out to see if you agree.

Volkswagen made a lot of nerds happy last year with their Darth Vader kid ad. While this year’s ad may or may not match up to that, the ending featuring classic Star Wars characters comparing the ad to last year’s ad makes up for it. It received a 590 Ace score.

Audi made us laugh this year with their Vampire Camp ad that’s sure to strike fear into the hearts of night creatures everywhere. It received a 536 Ace score.

The ad for the The Voice makes a great first impression by being action packed and featuring one of the best Betty White cameos ever.

Rounding out the best, we have Doritos. Ever since they started to let their fans make the ads, they have consistently turned out fantastic Super Bowl ads. This year is no different. It received a 645 Ace score.

What were your favorite ads of the Super Bowl? Let us know in the comments.

You may have seen GM’s ad during the Super Bowl. It pokes fun at Ford owners’ inability to survive the apocalypse because one’s truck model definitely changes survival odds.

The ad pokes fun at Ford, but is it enough to get angry over? Ford thinks it is.

Ford told Reuters that they have the safer pickup truck so even without the poking fun, GM is just wrong. Well, GM is not going to pull the ad because it’s a good ad. Why pull an ad even if it makes your competitor look bad? That’s the point of an advertisement.

Ford says that they are going to fight the allegations that they make an inferior truck not in court, but in the ad space. They will protect their claim of having the best-selling truck for the past 35 years.

It’s nice to see competition in the ad space. Even if both companies come out looking all the more foolish for their jabs at each other, the consumer gets the hilarious attack ads they make.

Politico is reporting that the game this year has attracted people from anti-abortion camps and sports blackout opponents trying to buy ads in and around the game.

Traditionally, the game has not been a place where political advertising is allowed. Wendy Melillo, an ad expert and professor at the American University School of Communication said that the only time a political ad has shown up in the Super Bowl has been in the form of “public-service advertising.”

Presidential candidate Randall Terry tried to get a campaign commercial featuring aborted fetuses on NBC’s Chicago station. It was shot down by the FCC on Friday. He said that other markets would run the ad on Sunday.

Terry’s attempt at buying ad space was turned back by the FCC because they said that “broadcasters do not have to sell airtime on the Super Bowl to federal candidates.”

Where Terry failed, other groups are attempting to have their voice heard during the game. Chapters of the Sports Fan Coalition are buying the time around the Super Bowl and in other football programming to push their campaign to get rid of sports blackout rules.

For those unaware, sports blackout rules in the NFL states that “any broadcaster that has a signal that transmits within a 75-mile radius of an NFL stadium may only broadcast the game if it is a road game, or if the game sells out 72 hours or more before game time.”

The Sports Fan Coalition learned a lot from the SOPA/PIPA protests this year and are wanting to apply that same power to this issue. They want to make people aware of these blackout laws and cause a public outrage that lawmakers can’t ignore.

While the game may be politics free now, some people see that as changing in the future. Melillo says that as a culture, we’re making it difficult to avoid anything “too partisan or too political or too religious.”

The FCC, however, doesn’t think so believing that this year’s push was an “isolated incident.” Buying air time on the Super Bowl is “special” and with all the other companies buying ads, they can’t very well give ad time to federal candidates.

What do you think? Should political ads be allowed in the Super Bowl? Or should the event stay politics free?

Reuters is reporting on General Sentiment, a social media analytics company, that “measures consumer impact and awareness for marketers and advertisers, using a formula it calls Impact Media Value.” They took all the ads and compiled a list of the companies which saw the largest boosts in awareness, who made the most money and who has the most Twitter followers that also follow the NFL and its teams.

What may surprise people is that Dannon made the number one spot on the first list, even though this is their first time airing an ad for the Super Bowl. Their ad featuring Oikos Greek Yogurt and actor John Stamos got the company the media attention it had craved for the past three months.

The next four brands to make the largest impact, in order, are E*Trade, Doritos, H&M and Kia.

The company that made the most money back on its investment was Samsung who spent a reported $18 million dollars on their Super Bowl ad for their new Galaxy Note. Interestingly enough, Samsung and Coca-Cola are the only two non-auto manufacturers to make the list. Honda, Volkswagen and Toyota are all looking at making gobs of money through their Super Bowl ads.

Then they took a look at which companies had the largest overlap of Twitter followers between the brand and the NFL. JetBlue had the most “total shared twitter followers with NFL and NFL teams” with 330,794 followers. The company did this through their partnership with DirectTV to broadcast Sunday football games to passengers. The airline will also be broadcasting the Super Bowl to those traveling today.

The other companies that follow, in order, are Amazon.com with 314,932 shared followers; Starbucks with 304,778 shared followers; TV Guide with 163,924 shared followers and Nike with 93,257 shared followers.

Finally, they look at which brands have a total shared percentage of Twitter followers with NFL and NFL teams. First place is Visa with 45.73 percent because of their “Ned’s Journey to the Super Bowl” ad campaign that promised one lucky winner and 10 friends a trip to the big game.

The other companies, in order, are Under Armor with 41.05 percent; Arby’s with 27.52 percent; Papa John’s with 27.42 percent and Outback Steakhouse with 26.29 percent.

These numbers are bound to change after the game since more people are going to be able to see the ads. It will be interesting to see which ad comes out on top as the best this year.

Original Article: Back in November, Google revealed that it was testing algorithm changes that would examine what appears “above the fold” on web pages. It raised a number of questions about the kinds of hoops webmasters would have to jump through.

Last week, the changes were officially announced as the “Page Layout” update, which looks at the layout of a page and the amount of content you see on the page once you click on a result.

Was your site impacted by the Page Layout or “above the fold” update? Let us know in the comments.

Upon announcing the update, Google “Distinguished Engineer” Matt Cutts wrote:

Rather than scrolling down the page past a slew of ads, users want to see content right away. So sites that don’t have much content “above-the-fold” can be affected by this change. If you click on a website and the part of the website you see first either doesn’t have a lot of visible content above-the-fold or dedicates a large fraction of the site’s initial screen real estate to ads, that’s not a very good user experience. Such sites may not rank as highly going forward.

We understand that placing ads above-the-fold is quite common for many websites; these ads often perform well and help publishers monetize online content. This algorithmic change does not affect sites who place ads above-the-fold to a normal degree, but affects sites that go much further to load the top of the page with ads to an excessive degree or that make it hard to find the actual original content on the page. This new algorithmic improvement tends to impact sites where there is only a small amount of visible content above-the-fold or relevant content is persistently pushed down by large blocks of ads.

Following the announcement of the Page Layout update, Matt Cutts hosted a Google+ Hangout where he clarified it a bit. As my colleague Chris Richardson recently reported:

“It’s not a numbers game. Google hasn’t written their algorithm to punish sites with, say, 20 ads above the fold, as opposed to the site owner who only has 19 showing. No, from the Cutts/Google perspective, the algorithm alteration inspects pages to see how the space, especially above the fold, is being used.

In fact, Google isn’t concerned about the number of ads at all. Instead, they just don’t want these ads — however many are appearing above the fold — taking up too much space.

In the hangout, Cutts demonstrated with two yellow stickies on the top of a standard 8.5 x 11 sheet of paper, indicating that even if this space was just one big ad it is too much and could be impacted by the algorithm change.

Cutts said, following the hangout, “I’ll try to review it to make sure I didn’t say anything too wrong. If things look good, we might be able to post the recording.” So, you may get to watch that in the near future.

The new update goes after a specific element of what many took to be an issue related to the Panda update (which, by the way a data refresh on that was confirmed this week).

One of Google’s “questions that one could use to assess the ‘quality of a page or an article,” for example, was: “Does this article have an excessive amount of ads that distract from or interfere with the main content?”

So, excessive or big ads at the top, may still get you in search visibility hot water. And speaking of that, SearchMetrics, which within the industry is well-known for providing data on losers and winners (in terms of search visibility) from the Panda update and other Google updates, has provided us with a top losers list from the page layout algorithm change. Here’s that list:

Some interesting names on that list, no? Facebook. Twitter. Yahoo. Amazon. MySpace. LinkedIn. YouTube. Aol. Sprinkle in the porn sites on the list, and it’s quite an interesting mix. I don’t associate sites like Twitter or Facebook with having too much non-content above the fold, so it’s very interesting that such sites would appear on the list.

Granted, this is just the analysis of one firm, so take it with a grain of salt. For that matter, Google makes algorithm tweaks every day, so it’s also possible sites were impacted by other changes.

Twitter and Facebook are particularly interesting entries, considering Google’s “Search Plus Your World” which gives greater prominence to Google+ content. Twitter, of course, was complaining about Twitter results not ranking better.

Notice that EzineArticlces – a past victim of Panda, which still to this day has quite a few ads above the fold, isn’t on the list. Here’s a look at the top of one of their article pages.

There are 11 ads (Google ads, actually) that are visible just on this part of the page. But the article isn’t too hard to find, so I guess it’s OK.

“If you take a look at the loser list, then you see some losers who used lots of Adsense. Interesting is that ezinearticles.com didn’t lose this time,” a SearchMetrics spokesperson tells WebProNews.

Are you surprised by any of the sites on the losers list? Has your site been impacted? Let us know in the comments.

As the 2012 Super Bowl ads roll in during the big game on February 5th, they will become available on the channel as well.

We’re kicking off the Hulu AdZone, presented by Toyota. AdZone offers you easy access to all of the Super Bowl ads available on Hulu today, from iconic ads from as early as 1973 to preview ads from 2012 (like VW’s Bark Side). Browse through ads from 2008 to 2011, and new this year, Hulu has partnered with Advertising Age to highlight celebrity cameos as well as their expert picks for the most iconic Super Bowl ads of all time, including Apple’s groundbreaking “1984.” And don’t forget to come back on game day, February 5, to watch all of this year’s ads in real time, share them with your friends, and vote for your favorites. We’ll announce our users’ pick for the best ad of 2012 on Monday, February 6.

YouTube has also launched their Super Bowl ad channel this year, Ad Blitz. It works a lot like Hulu’s Ad Zone – as in it will display all the new ads once they air during the game, and users will be allowed to vote on their favorites.

Hulu’s interface is putting a little more emphasis on the nostalgia of Super Bowl ads and taking you on a trip down memory lane – from Mean Joe Green to Volkswagen’s popular ad “The Force.”

Along with the Ad Age’s “best ads of all time” category, AdZone has categories for leaked and preview ads, Hulu editor picks, celebrity cameo ads, baby and animal ads, and fan-made submissions.

Head on over to AdZone to see a comprehensive playlist of the most memorable Super Bowl ads of all time. Or whet your appetite with my favorite, Terry Tate: Office Linebacker.

Are you one of the site owners Google is referring to? If so, do you plan on moving your ads around or are you going to wait and see what happens? Let us know if Google’s new algorithm adjustment affects you.

While there is no “x amount of ads exceeds our standard,” the blog post does offer some theoretical details about how the change targets the “too many ads” sites, while emphasizing their “above the fold” standard. The [emphasis added] sections are ours:

This algorithmic change does not affect sites who place ads above-the-fold to a normal degree, but affects sites that go much further to load the top of the page with ads to an excessive degree or that make it hard to find the actual original content on the page. This new algorithmic improvement tends to impact sites where there is only a small amount of visible content above-the-fold or relevant content is persistently pushed down by large blocks of ads.

This algorithmic change noticeably affects less than 1% of searches globally.

The question everyone is asking is how much is too much? Does Google have a number of ads in mind before it starts dolling out updated algorithm punishments? Based on what Google’s saying, if the ads make accessing the actual on-page content a chore, and the proliferation of ads appear above the fold, there’s a good chance your site will be stung.

As indicated, Google made the point of saying the new adjustment will only affect under one percent of searches, meaning, from Google’s perspective at least, the act of stuffing ads on a site, ads that obfuscate the content, is not an epidemic. From Google’s perspective, the updated algorithm is presented as a housecleaning tool, one that improves a user’s search engine experience by pushing ad-loaded sites down, while bringing the quality content up, at least theoretically.

For those sites that might have been punished in lieu of the new algorithm adjustment, unfortunately, you may be stuck with your site’s adjusted position in Google’s index, even if you make the necessary changes immediately after you’ve been punished. As pointed out by Danny Sullivan, around the time the above-the-fold ads algorithm change went live, he received an email from Google’s AdSense team, suggesting his personal blog put more ads on it, and they even sent a diagram suggesting how these ads should be positioned around the content.

Essentially, Google wants the content surrounded by ads, they just don’t want you to over do it, especially for content appearing above the fold. Google’s email also refers its recipients to a video about ad placement, which also suggests avoiding a proliferation of ads, especially at the top of the page:

The question is:

Click for larger image

As you can see, the search engine results page for the query “Samsung TV” pushes the organic content almost off the page. What happens when the gatekeeper quasi-violates their own rule, especially when they are making a point to inform site owners about the potential damage they can cause search engine rankings by making their pages top heavy with advertisements?

Does Google’s new algorithm change give you pause when it comes to placing ads on your sites or is this much ado about nothing? Let us know what you think.

The ad highlights this point, claiming that you can’t keep anything safe from aliens, including your Chromebook, but that at least your files will be safe, assuming aliens actually do attack, and destroy your Chomebook.

This has actually been one of the main points Google has made about Chrome OS from the beginning. It doesn’t matter how many times you break your Chromebooks, you can always get another one, and it will be as if nothing happened.

Google shared the new ad on Google+:

There’s one specific aspect of this topic that many experts have been questioning, and it’s whether or not Google is being hypocritical in regards to their latest algorithm changes penalizing sites with too many ads above the fold.

Danny Sullivan, of Searchengineland, went in-depth into this and looked at a couple of results pages which featured a good amount of ads above the fold. I thought his analysis was very interesting,

The blue box surrounds the content, the search listings that lead you to actual merchants selling trash cans, in this example. Some may argue that the Google shopping results box is further pushing down the “real content” of listings that lead out of Google. But the shopping results themselves do lead you to external merchants, so I consider them to be content.

According to Danny, Google also released a statement in regards to the criticisms they received involving their own ads…

This is a site-based algorithm that looks at all the pages across an entire site in aggregate. Although it’s possible to find a few searches on Google that trigger many ads, it’s vastly more common to have no ads or few ads on a page.

Again, this algorithm change is designed to demote sites that make it difficult for a user to get to the content and offer a bad user experience.

Having an ad above-the-fold doesn’t imply that you’re affected by this change. It’s that excessive behavior that we’re working to avoid for our users.

Many of the users on WebProWorld had interesting input regarding the subject.

One of our users provided this image, asking the question – So, I fully expect Google to penalize itself now. *chuckle*

Many responses have been in support of Google. Jeff Dishman, a Google employee said this of the ads presented on results pages, in a conversation involving the subject on Sullivan’s Google+ post.

when the post says “sites that don’t have much content “above-the-fold” can be affected by this change”, you can consider the ads at the top of a Google search to be “content”. It all comes down to relevancy; if someone is searching for credit cards, those ads at the top are likely to be something they are interested in. Also, the fact that this change will affect less than 1% of searches means that it’s targeted at sites that blatantly throw a ton of ads (where they are not relevant at all) at you in a way that will drive people away.

I know this probably won’t do anything to change the way you feel about this, but thought it was worth saying. *Disclaimer* – these are my views, and are not necessarily the views of my employer.

Another interesting aspect of this is how Google Adsense tells users that ads above the fold tend to do better. Providing users a chart of “hotter” areas to place ads.

To be fair, they also say Adsense users should place visitors first when determining ad placement and quantity.

Another WebProWorld user had an interesting take on the battle between Google’s ad network and improving their results page:

I nearly found myself in total despair of finding the correct word that describes googles arm wresting with itself. (left hand battling the right)

The right word may possibly a derivation of the word dyslexic
(dys·lex·i·a (d s-l k s – ). n. A learning disorder marked by impairment of the ability to recognize and comprehend written words.)

I like – dysgooglic (dys-goog-lic. A self inflicted disorder marked by a total impairment of any understanding of things it already understands.

or ‘Dysglooglic’ – biting your own balls syndrome.

It seems the consensus is that Google isn’t necessarily doing anything wrong with their algorithm update, in fact it’s a benefit to users. However, the lack of details regarding the changes along with their strategies given to Adsense users certainly provides plenty of questions.