Winners and losers from Super Bowl 50's Ad Bowl

The sports analysts say the key to winning the Super Bowl is the big D: Defense.

That's true even of brands. With so much money on the line -- $170,000 a second this year -- it's important to get it right. The worst Super Bowl ads are indelible, memorable for years. The best ones just have to not screw up. 

And the ads are, increasingly, a big draw of their own -- a visual, entertaining spectacle that claim their own place during the night. 

And with many of the commercials debuting in some form online weeks ahead of kick-off, that motivation to tune in to an actual television has also been removed.

Second screens are booming, whether they're laptops or mobile phones. 

There were other numerous ways to participate in the American tradition without ever watching the game. Twitter booms during live events like this. During the Super Bowl, 16.9 million tweets were sent by 3.8 million unique authors, according to Nielsen.

Another winner: YouTube. Mobile views to YouTube accounted for the majority of people who checked out the commercials during and after the big game, Google says.

For those of those who did want to tune in during the viewing window, there were numerous ways to do it without the TV cord. 

This was the fourth consecutive year that the Super Bowl was streamed online for free. CBS provided the game live on its website and via its CBS Sports App across a variety of services including Apple TV, Amazon Fire TV, Google Chromecast, RoKu and others.

Many marketers were asking themselves: why bother with a blockbuster TV ad?

This is all to say that leading into Super Bowl planning, many marketers were asking themselves: why bother with a blockbuster TV ad? And with 30 second spots costing up to $5 million dollars, is the cost still worth the fleeting return?

And then there is the risk that consumers, competitors and hashtag movements scrutinize every second of every spot across every social network.

We’ve seen a dose of this in year’s past, but 2016 truly does feel like we’ve passed the tipping point, leaving less space for traditional television and traditional advertising in an increasingly ephemeral marketing world.

This year’s game and this year’s commercials weren’t the spectacle we’ve come to expect, but given the current backdrop of American culture, a single game and a set of spots would be hard pressed to stand out. Maybe the only way would’ve been a Donald Trump cameo.

So to no one’s surprise, the real winner of Super Bowl capitalism was Beyoncé.

Here are some others that emerged with gold stars:

Car companies: From Jeep’s visual tribute to Audi’s emotional spot featuring David Bowie’s “Starman”, automakers splashed out some of those record profits this year to prove there’s still emotion tied up in the idea of American’s automobiles.

Doritos: True to form, it ran several spots, all of which conjured up some humor alongside some controversy. No matter which side you fell on, the spots caused conversation and continued Doritos' run as a relevant Super Bowl entity.

#PuppyMonkeyBaby: An adorably creepy creation by Mountain Dew trended all night. What this does for Mountain Dew is unclear. But the Internet is thankful for another weird creature to GIF.

Drake: Just when you thought that DJ Khaled had become the music darling of the digerati, enter Drake reminding us that he can do just about anything and stay on top. This time: selling out to T-Mobile.

Animals: Because at the end of the day, we are talking marketing’s universal safeground: animals. Two standouts were Heinz’s Wiener dog stampede and Honda’s chorus of singing sheep. 

Adorable, memorable and tweetable. 

There were no #epicfails this year when it came to the commercials. The only true losers were Coldplay’s costume designer and fans of The Good Wife who found out that show is approaching its final nine episodes. 

The rest of 2016 promises to bring even more dramatic changes to the way consumers think about television, leaving brand marketers wondering if there’s any defense left or if the supremacy of the Super Bowl spot will ride into the sunset with Peyton Manning and his bottle of Budweiser. 

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