The Super Bowl is perhaps the one television event where people actually look forward to the ads because so much effort is put into each one. And every year, there are a handful of standouts. You can watch the ads plenty of places online, including on Hulu. You can even watch Hulu’s own Super Bowl ad on Hulu, which oddly enough is preceded by a regular Web video ad. That just seems wrong to me on so many levels, especially since Hulu itself (which is partly owned by NBC) probably didn’t have to pay for the spot
I guess you could argue that some of these commercials are now entertainment in their own right, and thus deserve their own mini-commercials. The Hulu spot with Alec Baldwin (above) is certainly one of the better ones. He delivers the line:
They say TV will rot your brain. That’s absurd. TV only softens the brain, like a ripe banana. To take it all the way, we’ve created Hulu.
There were also lots of ads that poked fun at the economic downturn, including an ETrade ad with talking babies and a Cash4Gold.com ad starring Ed McMahon and and MC Hammer. To get people to come into its restaurants, Denny’s decided to offer free breakfast to everyone in America on Tuesday. But my favorite is this one from Monster.com which asks, Need Another Job?
CareerBuilder hit the same theme, but wasn’t quite as funny. In fact, CareerBuilder’s ad which repeatedly shows a woman miserable with her job screaming in her car, is downright depressing.
Then, of course, the trailer to the new Star Trek movie debuted as well, which I will embed below just because I know you will watch it (the trailer for Transformers 2 will also be popular).
Which was your favorite Super Bowl ad, and why?
DAMN! I can’t watch the ads… apparently anybody outside US cannot watch them… it says that the library can only be streamed within US.
All the ads on Yahoo! Video: http://video.ya...twork/100076996
All commercials should be “entertainment in their own right”!
No point in posting this video if it can viewed only by US Viewers
Why not? Because you can’t watch it, you don’t want me too either?
There were more truly bad spots this year than any previous Super Bowl in history. The Hulu spot was a standout as one of the good ones!
C’mon hulu, at least let us watch your friggin ads from Australia!!
its sort of stupid that they turned on the geographic filters for the ads.
Thought Hulu’s ad was a real standout this year. Well done!
The Conan O’Brian Budweiser ad was my favorite. I’m still laughing about that one.
My favorite one : Audi with Jason Statham, definitely !
Just use YouTube, the interface is the best too http://www.youtube.com/adblitz
really erick, you thought monster had the better ad over careerbuilder? i felt the monster ad was weak and i found myself laughing through the entire careerbuilder spot. and as for depressing, maybe you were watching a different ad as i didn’t get that at all.
all-in-all i thought the quality of super bowl ads has been declining over the years, particularly since janet’s wardrobe malfunction. seems nobody wants to be too edgy which makes for ho-hum advertising. this year was no different and i find myself glad i didn’t tune into the “big game” just to catch them.
carrerbuilder cheated, though. How do you not laugh at seeing a koala get blasted in the grill over and over?
The careerbuilder add kicked the Monster ad’s ass…BIGTIME.
Eric, I suggest you stay away from reviewing video, you suck at it.
Can’t view this outside the states. Guess I’ll just catch them on YouTube instead. Kind of silly, whoever made that decision…
Try installing Hotspot Shield http://www.hotspotshield.com/
which should let you access US web sites internationally.
Or, an alternative if you don’t like the ads and transfer limits of hotspotshield, use Personal VPN from Witopia http://www.witopia.net
Think of it like this. To watch the Hulu ad, I saw another ad that made Hulu.com money. Hence, I just *paid* Hulu to watch their own ad!
This is when you know you’ve got it made.
The Hulu Ad is on YouTube (officially) at:
http://www.yout...h?v=1m71m-LBqFQ
All the Superbowl ads (with voting) are here:
http://www.youtube.com/adblitz
Sounds fair to me. Someone’s gotta pay for the bandwidth. I’d rather watch a nice clean 5 second ad than to stare at 15 banner ads.
BTW TC, you guys have 15 banner ads.
Pepsuber wins, hands down.
SNL hasn’t been funny since SuperBowl XX…Pepsi Max for the win…and by the way “I’m Good”.
Also totally annoyed that I cannot easily watch the Hulu ads outside the US. But here is possibly the best spot for the Superbowl ads: http://superbow...s.fanhouse.com/
I’m still digesting this year’s ads. There were a few that made the whole room laugh, others made it groan.
But which ads were most responsible? You can vote here: http://responsi...om/blog/?p=1062
The Startrek movie looks great so that was a good one. I actually really liked the Careerbuilder advertisement. I thought it was extremely clever!
I am not in US and I can see nothing from Hulu.
Repeat after me “America is the center of the universe. America is the center of the universe.”,
Come on Hulu – get with it.
TechCrunch: Before you make a post aimed at a “broad” (international I would assume) audience, make sure your embedded video works outside of the US.
Humf!
The post was about Hulu, he embeded Hulu videos, you are not the center of the world either. He can’t control how they post these things or Hulu’s agreements with the studios or international laws.
You don’t need a website to hold your hand to find easy to find commercials.
And besides, it was aired in America for an American game which I doubt a lot of other countries watch
@ Driftwood: You are kidding – right?
I agree, HULU cannot control international laws. So I do retract my negative comments that were aimed at them. “It ain’t their fault”. But look at all of the comments similar to mine.
Erick made a mistake by posting the ads in the manner he did. Others have supplied better links. I am sure that TechCrunch’s “1904K readers” are not all in the US. So maybe next time a similar post is made, a disclaimer should be precced the post’s content.
American game? Hmmmmm. Maybe a game played by Americans? We play a similar (albeit more boring) version here. And it was derived from Rugby: “The history of American football, a spectator sport in the United States, can be traced to early versions of rugby football. Both games have their origin in varieties of football played in the United Kingdom in the mid-19th century, in which a ball is kicked at a goal and/or run over a line. (Wikipedia).
I bet you half of Canada watched the Super Bowl last night (none on Hulu).
I love threaded comments!
And I really wanted the Cardinals to win —–
@les
Relax a bit. This is a post about Hulu, Hulu’s ad, and Hulu’s hosting of all the superbowl ads. Since it’s entirely about Hulu, it makes sense to embed them from Hulu. Just because not everyone can see it doesn’t mean the rest shouldn’t. I’m in the US now but I spent a few years overseas very recently and dealt with the same thing all the time, but rather than writing a comment complaining about it I found another way to see what I wanted to see.
And if you read the article Erik posted two links to other places with all the commercials and can be seen from anywhere.
So outside the US you can’t watch [some? all?] content from Hulu.com, a US-based company. Sorry. Enough crying already.
I’m miffed that some foreign sites, WP plugins, etc. have no [poor] english translation.
But I’m not crying over it. Meh.
“we come to proclaim an end to the petty grievances and false promises, the recriminations and worn out dogmas, that for far too long have strangled our politics… the time has come to set aside childish things. The time has come to reaffirm our enduring spirit; to choose our better history; to carry forward that precious gift, that noble idea, passed on from generation to generation: the God-given promise that all are equal”
http://news.yah...tion_obama_text
Hulu, time to set aside childish things and treat everyone equally. Or else only present your links to Americans. Currently you’re deliberately setting out to insult people, and some of the bad feeling you cause will affect the USA, where you’re based.
Hulu is great. It’s free. It has limited ads. But, it is also very young. Just like over the air TV, cable TV, satelite TV, and IPTV … Hulu too will slowly become saturated with more and more advertisements, making it just as aggravating as all the other media outlets. Until these companies stop being so greedy and shuving so many ads in our faces, people are going to continue to seek alternative ways to get their entertainment. Sadly, ads are now starting to become prevalent in video games too. Whats next, commercials in our mp3’s?
Obviously all of you didn’t watch the 4rth quarter. If you did you would agree with me the cash4gold.com was the best… Why? because cash4gold was the last biz I was expecting to see, and MCHammer trying to sell his gold medallion of him wearing a gold medallion was classic.
The fact that cash4gold.com can afford a Superbowl ad should prove how hugely exploitative that company really is.
The fact that __INSERT COMPANY NAME__ can afford a Superbowl ad should prove how hugely exploitative that company really is.
oooowned.
To all you complaining about Hulu outside the US, it is not that Hulu doesn’t want you to watch their content- it is because of their licensing structure. They don’t have the rights to broadcast their content out beyond the US yet. I’m pretty sure the U.K. is next to get Hulu, but again this is a licensing thing. So don’t blame Hulu, blame NBC and FOX as they are the ones that own Hulu and structured the terms of use.
Monster vs. Careerbuilder: In our living room everyone was dying laughing at the CB ad, we actually rewound to watch it again; “Morning dummy.” (great line), the Monster ad turned us off.
What about the Doritos Crystal Ball ad? That was pretty funny, no?
…oh, I think it says a lot about the state of the economy and who is making money in this economy when a company like Cash4Gold.com is able to run a spot and a perennial like MasterLock has bowed out a few years in a row now. I mean you typically see Cash4Gold spots during re-runs on cable!
High Life!
Why is the high life commercial not on Hulu to vote for. Come on Hulu what did they not pay you to??? The commercial before it would be longer LOL.
High Life!!!!!!!
I liked the CareerBuilder ad because in spite of the economic crisis nowadays, it gives hope to everyone watching that there is still hope and it’s not yet the end of everything.
Have to admit – I thought the Hulu ad was terrible (and I’m a huge fan of the site). Here’s why:
http://thedigit...ble-advertiser/
The careerbuilder.com “tips” was the best because many people were able to relate to it. After the laughter on Sunday came the “sad but true” moment on Monday morning.
Wah!! i’m a TechCrunch commenter and I like to whine all of the time. I’m so depressed and Michael Arrington talks about Twitter too much
Anyway. I actually loved the Pepsi Max video. It didn’t get very much traction but I enjoyed it. The Coke commercial with the bugs stealing the coke was just well directed and equaled the quality of a pixar movie.
The Career Builder ad was indeed depressing. Probably the worse ad of all. They tried too hard!
The Career Builder ad was a muli-laugh winner.
The Monster ad was a one-laugh success.
The Conan ad sucked.
The Audi ad rocked.
The Doritos ads (both) were good.
The Taco Bell ad was good…”Mon…Dad”…Parents, “Is this her?”
And the “Don’t send box flowers” for Tele Flora (I even remember the client) was really funny…especially the “No one wants to see you naked.” line.
Overall…a good year.
The 3-D commercials were a little weak…
And I missed the E*Trade babies ad.
Joe
I may be biased, but I thought the grease monkeys were pretty awesome. If you want to see it, check out the video here http://bit.ly/4Jr2
Whoa – Total rip off of the Trunk Monkeys series!
http://www.trunkmonkeyad.com/
Probably the same “Actors”. Dunno, they all look the same to me!
ROFL
I think Hulu’s ad is awesome. Hulu or clown co is also my favorite website ever. There is no need to leave the house!
Mr and Mrs Potato Head took the cake IMO.
georetardation even in ads… it’s just ridiculous…
love this ad
Do you think Hulu got paid by the advertisers? Why not? And if so, why did they make us sit through 4 seconds of another ad. So I had to watch an ad to watch an ad. Someone’s makin money on this and it aint me.
Hulu sucks. Long live YouTube!
Hulu… “holder of precious things“, as long as those precious things are only in the US.
Hulu blows. But, of course, what else should one expect from NBC and News Corp?
LMAO ad made me LMAO
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I’m getting tired of Hulu and their “You can’t view this because your not in America” crap.
I don’t even need to remember to boycott Hulu!