Why USA Today Ad Meter Sucks

The best commercials of the Super Bowl, according to respondents using USA Today's Ad Meter, were as follows:

1. Mars’ Snickers — Guy plays football like Betty White
2. Doritos — Dog puts shock collar on owner
3. Bud Light — Man builds house out of beer cans
4. Budweiser — Fences don’t come in between friends
5. Coca-Cola — African sleepwalker finally gets Coke

The problems with the system are several:

A) The winning commercials all ran during the first quarter, if not the first commercial break. People are expecting funny and will choke on their Doritos laughing at the first amusing thing that happens in a commercial because they are waiting with baited breath for Betty White to get trucked. By the time a lot of the best (in my opinion) commercials ran (like Google's, which many many people thought was the best), people were already bored and were just comparing every spot to the last silly Bud Light ad they saw.

B) The "best" ads reward humor in the opening of the spots, because they'll score highly at the beginning, whereas a good ad does not necessarily need to be funny in the first 5 seconds to be successful. Betty White getting tackled probably got the Snickers spot scoring 10s on the Ad Meter right away, whereas ads like Google's took some time to develop and only would have scored highly at the end (and by people who paid attention).

C) The ads deemed the "best" just means that a room of 250 people thought they were the most entertaining. Good ads aren't always the most entertaining - David Ogilvy started his agency around the idea that the primary purpose of ads was to sell products (or ideas). While branding and entertainment is great, it needs to work toward the purpose of generating sales, which is how the success of advertising is actually measured, whether USA Today likes it or not.

Quite frankly, while I did chuckle at the Bud Light house and I thought it was a decent piece of advertising, it doesn't compel me to buy Bud Light, and therefore I don't think it's among the best ads on the industry's biggest stage.