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Ad Meter Super Bowl

Hyundai's 'First Date' wins USA TODAY's Super Bowl Ad Meter

Chris Woodyard
USA TODAY
Hyundai's ad 'First Date' for Super Bowl 50 features Kevin Hart.

The main advertising formula for this year’s Super Bowl pretty much boiled down to three words: Make ‘em laugh.  And the winner of USA TODAY's Ad Meter certainly was no exception.

Hyundai drove away with first-place honors. That ad depicted a dad, played by comedian Kevin Hart, who hands the keys of his new Hyundai Genesis to a young man who is taking his daughter on a date.

The ad shows off a feature of the car that allows an owner to track its location. Hart uses it to show up multiple locations frequented by his daughter and her date to keep tabs on them.

Super Bowl 50 Ad Meter

The second-place winner was a wacky Heinz ad that featured dachshunds that donned hot-dog bun outfits.  The dogs raced across a field and into the embrace of people dressed as mustard and ketchup.

 

In order to place at the top of Ad Meter, the winner had to score highest among the 60 or so commercials that aired during Sunday’s Super Bowl 50.

The winning streak ended for Anheuser-Busch InBev, a 14-time Ad Meter victor which won the last three years. In recent ads, the brewer wooed viewers with heart-tugging ads featuring its Clydesdale horses and an adorable dog.

For 28 consecutive years, USA TODAY’s Ad Meter has stood as one of the nation's most closely watched gauges of advertising success. This year, nearly 20,000 preregistered panelists from across the country weighed in. All the big game ads, as well as breakdowns on the voter demographics, are at admeter.usatoday.com.

This year’s advertisers not only spent big bucks producing commercials. They also lavished a record $5 million on 30 seconds of air time — up from about $4.4 million a year ago — to put their messages on the CBS broadcast.

While a good number of 2015's ads were on the somber side, for Super Bowl 2016, humor reigned supreme.

In a commercial for Anheuser-Busch’s Shock Top brand, comic T.J. Miller trades barbs at a bar with a smart-aleck talking beer tap.  In another ad, the brewer cast Seth Rogen and Amy Schumer as leaders of the "Bud Light Party," playing off the presidential election to stoke interest in its beer.

An ad for website provider Squarespace featured the comedy team of Key and Peele as a pair of hip amateur sportscasters.  The duo also provided live commentary during the game at squarespace.com.

Watch again: First quarter Super Bowl ads

Watch again: Second quarter Super Bowl 50 ads

Watch the 3rd quarter Super Bowl ads again

Watch again: Fourth quarter ads from Super Bowl 50

Showing that ad execs can move quickly when opportunity strikes, T-Mobile tapped TV personality Steve Harvey to spoof his infamous gaffe in naming the wrong winner of the Miss Universe beauty pageant.

In addition to humor, marketers also capitalized on a couple of other classic Super Bowl advertising move: highlighting animals and featuring celebrities.

Hyundai showed hikers who barely escape some hungry, talking bears -- thanks to the Elantra’s autostart feature.

Combining cute with creepy, Mountain Dew introduced the "Puppymonkeybaby" to promote its Kickstart line of drinks aimed at Millennials. The dancing, diaper-clad, drink-fetching pet - along with some sips of Kickstart -- work to get three guys up off a couch and moving. While it didn't rank high in Ad Meter, it caused a sensation in the social media world.   One Twitter user, @LilyLaneMusic, said she “never imagined three things so cute could be so terrifying together.”

Will Puppymonkeybaby haunt your dreams?

Celebs were out in full force this year. Advertisers recruited a slew of well-known actors, singers and sports stars to appear in their commercials. Among the many famous faces: Liam Neeson. Helen Mirren, Kevin Hart, Christopher Walken, Willem Dafoe, Alec Baldwin, Drake, Serena Williams and Anthony Hopkins.

One big benefit of hiring big-name stars: They have massive social media followings, so it just takes one tweet or a single Facebook post to dramatically ramp up buzz about their ads.

Hyundai used this technique to promote its winning ad, featuring Hart, as well as an ad featuring Ryan Reynolds.

In one of his Facebook posts, Hart encouraged his fans to head to the Ad Meter site to vote on the first date-themed ad.  Reynolds, who has more than one million Twitter followers, sent a link to his ad when it became public. The commercial with Reynolds came in fifth on Ad Meter.

What was missing: some of the sexy scenes from year’s past.

About as close as a commercial came to an ogle factor was two young women depicted as being repeatedly distracted in a Hyundai Elantra because they keep seeing hunky actor Reynolds everywhere as they drive in fictional "Ryanville."  They are saved from an accident by their car's collision avoidance system.

Inspiration replaced titillation.  Gamemaker Pokemon Company International ran an ad that showed youngsters in a succession of athletic feats. The uplifting message: "I can do this."  The big game commercial from BMW's Mini division featured a list of stars like tennis' Williams, soccer's Abby Wambach, rapper T-Pain and actor Harvey Keitel urging viewers to "defy labels" that are put on people -- and cars.

Public service messages also hit the small screen. Oscar-winner Mirren starred in an anti-drunken driving ad from A-B’s Budweiser. Colgate called for water conservation. No More, a coalition of advocacy groups, aired an ad designed to raise awareness around domestic violence and sexual assault.

Contributing:  Roger Yu, Charisse Jones, Kris Kinkade, Madison Mills,Ben Mitchell 

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