'Like A Girl,' Budweiser's Lost Puppy Compete For Best Super Bowl Commercial, But Ad Watchers Are Split

The New England Patriots may have won Super Bowl XLIX Sunday night, but who won for best commercial? It depends somewhat on whom you ask, but the morning after the big game two ads are making a strong case: Procter & Gamble's moving "Like a Girl" spot and Budweiser's re-heat of its "Puppy Love" campaign from a year ago, "Lost Dog."

When it comes to social conversation, the Always brand's "Like a Girl" spot was the highlight of the ad game, according to the analytics firm Networked Insights, which found that the commercial gave an overwhelming number of users a lift in trust, joy and happiness. The minute-long ad, which has attracted nearly 60 million views on YouTube in the eight months since it was first posted online, highlights how saying someone throws a ball or runs “like a girl” is an insult -- and attempts to change that.

The #LikeAGirl hashtag took over Twitter almost immediately, finding favor with the majority of users but also inspiring the inevitable backlash from users who sought to warp its message.

USA Today's Ad Meter isolates 7,000 real people who react to the ads in real time by turning a dial to indicate what they like and don't like. Now, here's a surprise: They like puppies.

“Lost Dog” earned 8.1 points of a possible 10 from the Ad Meter panelists charged with rating the Super Bowl ads for USA Today. They found that the ad was most effective with viewers over the age of 65, and viewers with an annual income of between $25,000 and $75,000. The story of the lost puppy who finds its way home with help from the Budweiser Clydesdales was more likely to resonate with females than with males; the ad found the most success with football fans in Rhode Island.

The real winner after the Super Bowl, though, wasn’t the golden retriever or even the New England Patriots, but NBC. TV ratings won’t be released until Monday afternoon, but experts predicted the viewing audience would exceed the 112.2 million viewers who tuned in for the bowl in 2014. NBC broadcast the game as part of a nine-year extension with the NFL in which it pays a reported billion dollars per year, sharing Super Bowl rights with CBS and Fox.

Earlier this month the league announced it expected to sell every commercial spot at a price of $4.5 million, a substantial uptick from the $4 million Fox charged for ads during last year's Super Bowl between the Denver Broncos and the Seattle Seahawks. More than 1.3 million viewers streamed the game this year via NBC's live feed, another record, though not all commercials were broadcast there.