I thought there were several very creative ads. A few felt like short movies-the Justin Timberlake "trailor" and the ad for Audi with the older man in bed. They both were engaging and unusually long for a commercial. The one that really stuck out for me was the AMP commercial. It was outrageous!

Other ads worth mentioning include, Tide "Silence the Stain"- it was so funny and really made the tagline memorable. And then they drove traffic to the website where they invite you to create your own spoof and post it so others can come back and review them. Briliiant!!! Pepsi Max was fun with the music and the sleepy bobble heads-it kept me wondering, where is this going? My generation grew up with Michael Jackson so the Thrillicious spot for Life water grabbed me because of the nostalgic music and the lizards doing the still cool today "thriller" dance. I guessed it was for Geicko and couldn't believe it was for a water product. The ad for Gatorade with the black lab just got on my nerves and didn't have the pay off I was expecting. The idea was not that funny for as long as it dragged out. Low budget doesn't have to equal poor idea.

No matter what ad is on the Super Bowl, I'll watch it because I marvel at how the big shop "creatives" come up with these ideas and then I look at production values too.

This years Superbowl ads were all forgettable, but I always seem to enjoy the Budweiser commercials, maybe its because of the influence... I really didn't get the Doritos girl that just sang the whole time, I didn't know she was a contest winner until I read about it a couple of seconds ago, I think that Doritos knew that too, because 2-3 commercials later they actually showed their product. I thought that advertising should sell your "product", not someone. Oh ya I can't forget the dozen American idol commercials, but I'm sure my opinion wonÕt matter until I get enough money to make a heavy hitter commercial.

Before I mention what I think the best and worst Super Bowl ads were, I'd just like to point out how interesting it was to see so many internet companies advertising. Sure, Pepsi and Ford have been putting website links on their commercials for a few years, but only in the past few years have tech companies themselves been advertising as well. I counted at least 6: Cars.com, eTrade.com, GoDaddy.com, SalesGenie.com, CareerBuilder.com and Overstock.com.

If I had to choose, I'd say the Cars.com commercial did the best at what a Super Bowl ad should do: tell me about the product and make me laugh. The stone circle of death was amusing, and the shopper explains quite clearly what Cars.com can do.

As far as worst, GoDaddy.com's commercial showed a pretty girl, but still doesn't make clear what their company is. And SalesGenie.com's commercial was just offensive with its over-the-top fake-Asian accents, not to mention the low-budget animation.

Best: Of the commercials my favorite would have to be the Semi Pro Jackie Moon Bud Light commercial not only is it hilarious it also promotes two things at once the Semi-Pro movie and bud light.

Worst: The careerbuilder.com commercial I thought was kind of scary from the point that it would frighten most small children. How often do children see hearts burst out of their body and walk off!

To start off, I am a huge Will Ferrell fan, so his commercials were among my favorite. I do, however, prefer Bud over Bud Light. The Danica Patrick spot made me go to GoDaddy.com to see the rejected spot, which was funny, but tried a little too hard to be dirty over the line. Seeing Shaquiel O'neal dwarf a racehorse was very amusing, but I forget what the ad was for. Cars.com's tiny head spot was the funniest of their spots and carreerbuilder.com's walking heart was kind of creepy. Toyota didn't impress me with the badger in the car. It seems like that has been done before. Maybe in a Will Ferrell movie or something. Bud Light had some good spots, but like Toyota, I've seen a commercial for Hardies where a guy breaths fire and sets the company sprinkler system off. That was funnier.

I guess every year I am somewhat unimpressed by most commercials but do have a good laugh at some. In a nutshell, this year's spots made me want to get an Audi R8, see Iron Man and Semi-Pro, still not want to drink Pepsi and realize that no one looking to buy a Lexus is going to consider a Hyundai instead.

The most clever commercial that I saw was actually prior to the Super Bowl. If you text to a certain phone number, you can donate $5.00 to the United Way. Will this be the end of telemarketers calling to request donations? Will direct mail for capital campaigns begin to diminish? I don't think so. I believe this is clever opportunity to reach a entirely new market for charitable giving.

Looking back, I remember watching Tom Petty and his illuminative stage and thinking I was delighted in the apparent lack of cavemen this year and animals acting human - when personified correctly - is nothing short of genius.

It didnÕt take more than two or three breaks into the 3rd Quarter, however, for Bud Light to take one more stab at pulling humor from the troglodyte lifestyle and sink my joy in believing Madison Avenue Creatives had finally ventured beyond the cave. And after seeing Shaq as a jockey, suddenly human animals were not nearly as funny.

The first spot from Bridgestone - using screaming animals - was hilarious and left nothing to question as to what the ad was for. It uniquely allowed for a combination of a wonderful product demonstration and quality humor that is mostly lost in Super Bowl commercials. Most go for the laugh without any regards to what is to be sold, leaving a trail of laughter, with no brand image burned into the brain.

Which is exactly why G2 did such a great job. Coupled with their teaser ads that led up to Derek Jeter's Super Bowl commercial, G2 could not have described their product any better with his choice of words.

In the end, though, there were Godfather references, walking organs and something about sleeping badgers, but for whatever reason, when I think Super Bowl XLII, I canÕt get the image of Darryl Isaacs (a local pseudo-celebrity who's famous for questionable-at-best advertising) and his slammin' version of the Twist out of my head.

As I watched the game last night, a U2 lyric kept running through my head; "Every artist is a cannibal. Every poet is a thief." I kept finding myself saying, "That was good, but I like it better the first time I saw it... when it was in [blank].

From angry badgers in a Toyota, (funnier when it was a cougar in a stock car in Talladega Nights) to Sobe's anthropomorphic lizards (which made me want an insurance quote, not a tasty beverage with ingredients I can't pronounce), last nights crop of ads seemed to be filled with "been there... done that."

Having said that, here were the highlights, as I saw them.

1st Quarter: Under Armour - "The Future is Ours" This was probably my favorite spot of the night. It was cinematic in scale and beautiful to watch. When it was over, I turned to my wife and said, "I'd go see that movie." But will I buy their shoe? I doubt it. And since their new product line doesn't hit the stores until May, I think the buy strategy is a little risky. But with no other sportswear companies in the lineup last night, at least they owned the evening. And in spite of loving this ad, I loved it more when it was Apple's iconic "1984" ad.

2nd Quarter: Go Daddy - "Danica Patrick Exposure" What a great way to drive web traffic. Disclaimer: I have no desire to see Danica Patrick exposed in any way, but I'll admit that curiosity got the best of me and while I'm not proud, their web spot made me laugh. I guess deep down, I'm still an adolescent male at heart.

3rd Quarter: Coca-Cola - "Parade Balloons" A really well executed ad that didn't require you to have an over-inflated sense of irony to appreciate it. There was nothing hip or cutting edge about it. It wasn't "in-your-face" or "extreme." It was what we expect from a classic Coke commercial, warm and fuzzy.

4th Quarter: Bud Light - "Semi-Pro" Bud can always be counted on to deliver a couple of really funny ads and this year was no exception. Will Farrell would be funny reading the phone book. Give him and a funny retro costume and a half an hour in front of a camera and I'm laughing out loud. Those are the pitch lines we, as creative professionals, laugh about behind closed doors before we come up with "The Big Idea."

Worst ads of the evening: Sales Genie - What do you get when you combing mediocre animation with scripts that make no sense and feature stereotypes that boarder on racist? A big waste of $5.4 million dollars.

And I honestly can't take another ad featuring babies and animals with CGI lips. Seriously. Can we all just agree, as a group, to stop making those ads? Honestly, I'll buy your products. Just don't show me another wisecracking infant.

First of all, it is incredibly difficult to make a kick-ass 30 second spot that works well as an ad as well as a standalone short film, which is the expectation for a "Super Bowl Ad". So, it's a bit unfair to criticize the majority of the ads which are fine, but formulaic in nature - meaning they start with the setup, something absurd happens, the viewer tries to catch up, there may or may not be a celebrity cameo, then BAM, here comes the funny. In the words of Dick Clark, you always have to have the funny. Most of the ads fall into the numbing horde. They all start to look and sound the same, when they are played back to back.

But the most effective ad that I saw wasn't funny, just very simple and effective: the GMC Ad for the hybrid SUV. There's a guy pushing a rock up a slope, drawn in a very simple chiaroscuro style with a VO and music, then they payoff - they said it couldn't be done but we did it, as the stick figure stops to catch a breath after pushing the boulder to the top. Perfect theme for the Super Bowl - never giving up - very simple production values, so the cost wouldn't be so great, and greta theme for the product.

The dumbest ad I saw was for Life Water, whatever that is. It apparently makes one dance the Thriller dance with a bunch of lizards (Lizards? Why? And isn't the Thriller nostalgia a bit tired now? ), and rids of of the heebie jeebies as the lizards climb all over your supine body as you refresh yourself with Life Water. The only reason I knew the name of the product was because I saw it in a bumper later. I think it's a Sobe product, whose mascot is a gecko. Still, yeeesh...

Is any one actually excited about vitamin water?
As a whole, it seemed the tv spots during this year's super bowl relied VERY LITTLE on support from motion graphics or substantial visual enhancement at all. Rather each spot built a sense of suspense as to who the ad was for....leaving the viewer to watch just to see who just spent 20 million to make a badger talk & drink beer. This approach probably only works once a year when a large percentage of an event's viewers actually tune in "just to see the commercials." People have a longer attention span for commercials on Super Sunday.

The coolest visual for me, was in the GMC Yuko Hybrid spot. The technique used an animated illustration of a man pushing a giant sphere to the top of a mountain. The man flickered between 10 or so different illustration styles during his climb to the summit....he would morph from a giant muscular behemoth, to a stick figure, to an ape-like man....all reinforcing the underlying theme of, "Push, change, grow. Never say never."

The FedEx carrier pigeons were pretty entertaining as well. Love it when total chaos breaks out toward the end...Does a perfect job of illustrating what FedEx is not. Or at least thats what they want you to believe.

The "Coke Float" was very visually inviting ....a very beautifully colored piece. The spot featured a very warm & a bit desaturated color palette, which further played up the nostalgic feeling of the Coke brand.

On the other end of the spectrum....what was up with the pathetic local spots which aired (I believe) during halftime? How long will shitty, ambulance-chasing, crooked lawyers continue to insult the public with their low-budget commercials? Surprisingly though, there was an even worse spot from John Jones GMC which featured what I think was supposed to be a singing telegram.....and if they didn't suck bad enough, they end up juxtaposed with commercials that costs millions, created by some of the best ad agencies in the world.

This year's super bowl ads were funny to say the least. A few of them made me chuckle, but not really want to buy anything. The only thing that any of these commercials made me absolutely want is the new Audi. But I think that is because the car is awesome, can't really remember much about the rest of the commercial.

The lizards dancing to Thriller in the Life Water commercial were hilarious, but it still did not make me want to buy the product. I have to say I didn't get the Dorito's ad with the singing girl, but they made up for it later with giant mouse beating up the guy who set the mouse trap. I always enjoy the Bud Light commercials, but I like the "cheese party" one the best. I loved the Pepsi commercial with Justin Timberlake, maybe that is just because I love JT or because watching him get slammed into things made me laugh out loud, but I still won't be buying Pepsi.

Super Bowl Ads this year were overly saturated with Star power. So much so that I feel that the ads got lost among one another. Utilizing a star in advertising can be a good strategic move, but with so many stars this year, many ads were "overpowered" by star power. There were two that stood out for me: Justin Timberlake for Pepsi Ð I may be a little partial, but I thought this one had a good use of humor while maintaining its focus on the product, Pepsi. Plus, who doesn't enjoy watching Justin Timberlake do just about anything?

Dwyane Wade and Charles Barkley for T-mobile Ð Again this was a great use of humor and done in a way to which most Americans can relate. Who hasn't used "I'm going through a tunnel, I may lose you" as an excuse to avoid annoying phone calls? This commercial also stays on target with the product through its variety of phone call connectionsÉon the court, in the shower and so on, I got the point: T-Mobile will get your call through.

Finally, I thought there was one other commercial that did a great job of promoting its product in a new and humorous way: the Planters spot for cashews. Loved the unibrow and pink over-the-top outfit. Who would have thought that Planters Cashews were such an aphrodisiacÉbrilliant!

The best super bowl commercial by far was the Pepsi commercial featuring Justin Timberlake. It was only a matter of time before all companies stepped commercials up a notch by featuring celebrities. It seemed to be a common theme amongst many Super Bowl commercials. The commercial was very entertaining and I would love to see the production process behind it. How did they drag Justin around? This could be a great new reality show, "The making of TV commercials."

Top 5 Memorable Superbowl commercials:

5. Pepsi-"Every sip gets you closer to Justin" Very creative and hilarious.

4. Gatorade- (Dog drinking water) I hated watching this large dog lap up its water and the whole time I was wondering what this could be for. Finally, it was revealed. Three Gatorade bottles appear next to the dog bowl. All I could think was how obnoxious this commercial was. But, it clearly did its job. I remember it even though it was not something I liked.

3. Bud Light- Will Farrell "Suck One"- I think this commercial was hysterical and often times, using a celebrity to sell your product makes it more memorable.

2. Budweiser: Great American Lager campaign ("Rocky" theme dog trains horse) It was simple in that it didn't stray from its previous Great American Lager campaign. Sweet and Simple, works every time!

1. Planters Nuts (Instinctively good commercial with the "I love you baby" song)

As always, there were plenty of entertaining commercials during this year's Superbowl. I do, however, have two favorites that stick out in my mind. Diet Pepsi Max has the commercial with everyone falling asleep until they drink Diet Pepsi Max, which is when they begin to do the head bob from A Night At The Roxbury. With the music selection, the dance imitated, the celebrities portrayed, this spot spoke directly to their target audience and did it in a very entertaining way.

The other spot I found absolutely hilarious is the Bud Light/Semi Pro commercial. I typically find it difficult to communicate a dual message at the same time for two totally separate products, and they found a way to do this and, in humorous way. Will Farrell's movie, Semi Pro, was lightly pushed in the message, but made his character seem hilarious (which they typically are). Bud Light didn't have a specific message, rather awareness and to make the brand top-of-mind, which worked perfectly having such a comical character talk about the product. Both commercials are great!

Apart from its intrinsic humor value, the Tide to Go My Talking Stain spot also scored high on the audience interactivity scale for me. The spot directs viewers to mytalkingstain.com, where you can create your own Talking Stain ad - the winner will be aired during a Prime Time show, which is a pretty cool prize.

This spot generates a multi-touch relationship with the viewer, which is what I love about it. Not only does the product touch the viewer in the spot, but it also touches them on the website, then on the YouTube channel where the entries are all posted and then finally when the winning ad is posted. All of these touches add up to high cognitive awareness and brand loyalty when a shopper is standing in front of all of the stain remover pens at the Target checkout line. Plus, just for kicks and grins, the buttons on the site talk like the talking stain when you mouseover them.

My favorite Super Bowl commercial was the FedEx pigeons. The pigeons wreaking havoc was funny and the content was related to the service they are selling, two things that will help any viewer remember what the commercial was actually promoting when they are talking about their favorite commercials in the office this morning. Just for kicks, my two other faves were D Wade finally making Charles Barkley's 5 and Justin Timberlake for Pepsi Stuff.

But what's even more hot than JT right now, is the MySpace page for Super Bowl ads. Seriously, in the time it's taken me to write the paragraph above, the page has added 168 new friends. Eli Manning probably has not went to sleep yet and this page already has 86,193 friends. Those numbers alone should tell everyone is this business that MySpace is a legitimate advertising tool and should be taken seriously. And with that, the Super Bowl page has added another 151 friends.