According to Peter Daboll, the company’s CEO, the top spot was actually tied by M&M’s with its “Just My Shell” spot and Doritos with its “Sling Baby” ad. Coca-Cola followed with its “The Catch,” and the Doritos “Man’s Best Friend” and Coca-Cola’s “Superstition” ads came in 4th and 5th respectively.

As Daboll explained, all these ads were humorous, which gave them a broad demographic appeal that is perfect for the Super Bowl audience.

On the not-so-effective side, Ace Metrix’s least effective ads were Budweiser’s “Welcome to Halftime,” Hulu’s “Hulubratory,” Budweiser’s “Work,” H&M’s “David Beckham Bodywear Collection,” and Budweiser’s “Eternal Optimism.” According to Daboll, these ads were not properly tested and left people wondering what the real message was.

What were your favorite ads? Which did you like the least? We’d love to hear in the comments.

As a service that measures how influential people are on the social Web, Klout looks at the content that users create and analyzes what it is they’re talking about. From there, it examines how people react to that content, thus finding the influence.

“For us, when we think about influence, it’s really about the ability to drive some sort of action,” explained Klout CEO Joe Fernandez to WebProNews.

This new metric has been referred to as an equivalent to Google’s PageRank for the social Web. Because Google continues to tweak PageRank, we can understand how a similar metric for the social Web would be an ongoing challenge as well. For example, one person might be very influential to another person but may not have a very high Klout Score, since Klout measures data for efforts across the entire social Web.

Fernandez pointed out, specifically, that, according to their data, Justin Beiber is more influential online than President Obama is. While that is hard for some people to swallow, he said that a video of Justin Bieber gets considerably more clicks and links than a video of President Obama gets.

“We just kind of let the data speak for itself,” he said.

In addition, Jeremiah Owyang recently released a report that found that, while Klout is a useful metric, it offers an incomplete view of customers for brands. Fernandez said that, while Klout is a critical data point that adds value to customer service and targeting decisions, businesses should consider other data points as well.

Fernandez also acknowledges the challenge of spam and said that the company takes it very seriously.

“It’s something that we’re going to have to continue to face, and honestly, we have to do a better job at it,” he said.

For people and businesses that want to boost their Klout Score, Fernandez recommends being consistent. Klout Score largely depends on how much the person is involved in the conversation and whether or not he is adding value.

Klout currently measures influence across Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, but it hopes to expand to other social platforms this year.

As he explains to WebProNews, if a sales rep makes 100 phone calls and out of those 100 calls gets 16 hits. From those 16 hits, he converts 4 into sales. In this scenario, the company does not look at the phone bill. Instead, it looks at the results. Brogan says this is how social media should be viewed.

The problem is that Internet marketers are accustomed to very measurable data. Most are used to throwing money into Google with the expectation of getting something in return. Brogan says that social, on the other hand, is not simple math.

Time is another difficult area with social media since many companies do not understand how much time it takes. To add to this difficulty, as new social sites pop up almost daily, people feel pressured into embracing them also.

“I think with time management, you just got to keep going for the mindset of what your real goal is,” said Brogan.

Lastly, he tells people to “promote others 12 times as much as you promote your own stuff.” By doing this with newcomers to the space, you have the ability to gain long-term support.

How do you approach these challenging areas of social media?

He gives an example in which a marketing director in the UK was asked where he would spend a large sum of money if it were given to him. The marketing director decided that although he didn’t have a lot of data on public relations, he felt PR was the best area the money could be spent.

This example made Teasdale realize how much marketers really do depend on data. However, it is important for marketers to also realize that there are a lot of things happening in other areas, such as social and press. Although it is difficult to measure and obtain data from these areas, they have a powerful impact on marketing.

In other words, Teasdale believes that marketers who are intuitive and creative could essentially be more effective than marketers who are entirely focused on data and statistics. He says,  “My view is, you can optimize your way to a better version of the present, but you won’t find the future.”

Teasdale also believes more creative things should happen online. He even says that Google is somewhat restricted in its marketing efforts due to its position in the market. Since the search giant brings in so much revenue, it is hard for the company to try to anything new or imaginative out of fear of failure. As a result, Teasdale says companies such as Bing could have greater opportunities to be creative since it doesn’t have as much to lose.

What do you think? Are marketers so consumed with data that they are neglecting creativity?

Roth said the purpose of the new campaign was to re-engage users with Yahoo. The campaign put a new face on Yahoo and gave it a new slogan: “It’s You!” The tagline’s intention is to put a focus on users and show that Yahoo has something for everyone.

Since Yahoo is trying to re-engage its users, Roth saw the need to incorporate paid search techniques. Although people talk constantly about true value lying in branding and awareness, any time a person pays for something, he wants to know what he gets in return. As a result, Roth and his team had to essentially apply revenue by creating metrics for measuring the engagement.

They did this by placing pixels all over the site for things such as pageviews, calls to action, and even hard conversion points like making Yahoo a homepage and downloading the toolbar. In addition, they conducted ad-hoc analysis to look at all the Yahoo data.

Although it has been a challenging process for Yahoo, Roth said it has been a good experience.

However, there are still challenges to understanding web analytics as Ben Hanna of Business.com told WebProNews. Marketers need to determine which metrics will bring them success. Hanna says marketers and businesses need to recognize that there are, in fact, challenges and take them seriously because it is “critical to their growth and development.”

To help overcome these challenges, Business.com introduced Conversion Tracking, which provides advertisers and marketers with metrics that are not available in other web analytics programs. In addition, Hanna explains how the BuyerSphere Project also offers very useful information on B2B buying and how businesses use the Internet.

In this video, Mike McDonald interviews Seth Besmertnik of Conductor who shares some important information regarding metrics. He explains that businesses need to look at their overall marketing opportunities in order to understand which metrics they should focus their efforts on.

According to Seth, many businesses are investing a lot of time and money in areas that are not bringing in a great deal of return. He recommends looking at all your keywords, search volumes, potential click-thru-rates, your site’s conversion rates, and your potential average sale price if you’re a retailer. As you examine these metrics closely, your overall marketing opportunity should become apparent.

Seth emphasizes the significance of sharing all the data with the entire company. Successful SEO efforts require involvement from all members of the company. Also, use your data in every way possible. For example, Seth suggests using your paid search data to help with your organic search efforts.

Ultimately, companies need to be able to foresee their full potential, which sometimes requires looking from the outside in.