As usual, Anheuser-Busch topped many postgame Super Bowl ad polls with its spot about the Clydesdale training “Rocky”-style to make the beer company’s storied horse team, with a Dalmatian for a trainer.  But overall, it was not a great year for the beer company, whose Bud Light spots did not rate as highly as in past years, not even making the top five in viewer polls like McKee Wallwork Cleveland’s AdBowl.  Instead, a number of newer Super Bowl advertisers stood out in this year’s game.  Coca-Cola, which has advertised just twice in the past decade, scored a highly rated spot with “It’s Mine,” about Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade balloons fighting over an inflatable Coke.  And Tide, which had never advertised in the big game before, got high marks for a spot about a talking stain.  While cute resonated with viewers, racy ads seemed to fall flat.  Victoria’s Secret and Go Daddy spots both got low ratings. Steve McKee, president of McKee Wallwork Cleveland, talks to Media Life about the night’s best spots, why Coke topped Pepsi, and why Bud Light fell flat.

Super Bowl advertisers spend months trying to come up with the funniest, most creative ads for the big game in order to win postgame buzz.  But some of those funny, creative ads aren’t doing much to help advertisers establish their brand, according to a new study from the University of Tampa and Boston-based agency Brain on Brand that questioned 100 students about the 2006 Super Bowl ads a year after the game.  It found viewers rarely made a definitive connection between the commercials and the product being sold.  Even for advertisements that stood out for their originality, viewers frequently misidentified the product that each ad was promoting.  For example, a spot for Fed Ex most respondents misidentified as one for UPS.  That suggests that many advertisers, while paying millions for their Super Bowl spots, aren’t getting the value they thought they were paying for.  Dr. Stephen Blessing, assistant professor of psychology at The University of Tampa and co-author of the study, talks to Media Life about how advertisers can avoid this problem, why Budweiser benefits, and when advertisers should stay on message.

There’s been much talk over recent years of new media cannibalizing old, but that may be far from the case. In fact, new media may actually be helping to strengthen some forms of traditional media, such as TV and magazines. That’s one finding in a wide-ranging new study from Deloitte's Technology, Media & Telecom Group, which broke respondents into four groups: Millennials ages 13-24, Generation Xers ages 25-41, Boomers ages 42-60 and Matures ages 61-75. It found that while there are many variances in media usage between these groups, there is also a lot that ties them together. They are using the internet, for example, to feed their TV habits, sharing their opinions on favorite shows. They employ DVRs mainly to ensure they catch their favorite programs, not in order to skip commercials. And nearly three-quarters said they still read magazines, even though they realize they can find much of the same information online. Ed Moran, director of product innovation at Deloitte, talks to Media Life about feeding viewers’ TV habits online, the pervasiveness of user-generated content, and the biggest differences among the four generations.

It is only a matter of time until nearly all advertisements around the world are digital.

Or so says David W. Kenny, the chairman and chief executive of Digitas, the advertising agency in Boston that was acquired by the Publicis Groupe for $1.3 billion six months ago.

Now Mr. Kenny is reshaping the digital advertising strategy for the entire Publicis worldwide conglomerate, which includes agencies like Saatchi & Saatchi, Leo Burnett and the Starcom MediaVest Group and the global accounts of companies like Procter & Gamble, American Express, Hewlett-Packard and General Motors.

The plan is to build a global digital ad network that uses offshore labor to create thousands of versions of ads. Then, using data about consumers and computer algorithms, the network will decide which advertising message to show at which moment to every person who turns on a computer, cellphone or — eventually — a television.

When it comes to reaching Hispanics, using Spanish-language advertising might seem like a no-brainer. But according to a new study from Simmons Research, a New York-based tracker of consumer behavior, that’s not necessarily the case. While first-generation Hispanics prefer Spanish-language advertising because it’s easier to understand, second- and especially third-generation Hispanics are somewhat indifferent to it. Just 6 percent of third-generation and 16 percent of second-generation respondents agreed with the statement “When I hear a company advertise in Spanish, it makes me feel like they respect my heritage and want my business,” compared with 49 percent of first-generation respondents. And while more than half of first-generation respondents said they’d be more loyal to brands that advertise in Spanish, just 33 percent of second-generation and 22 percent of third-generation respondents agreed.