And the winner in the Super Bowl advertising competition was… everyone and no one.

As usual, there was a lot of media buzz about which were the best ads to show during the Big Game. The consensus appears to be that none of this year’s advertising crop was astounding, though many of the ads were deemed effective by different outlets using different criteria. This is the part I always find most interesting: How do we measure the effectiveness of mass media advertising in general, and more specifically during the Super Bowl where a 30-second spot costs around $2.5 million, plus production? I guess it depends on what it is we’re trying to measure.

• According to most of the ad agency experts (those who did not have a stake in the game) it was a relatively poor showing as companies were playing it conservatively, due to concern about consumer attitudes with the bad economy and all.

• Based on a next-day survey of Twitter chat done with the Squawq analytic tool, there were about 185,000 post-game tweets about the ads (compared with 675,000 about the game). The winner, in terms of pure entertainment value, appeared to be Frito-Lay for its Doritos ads produced by amateurs, with the samurai snack attack and the dog collar.

• Another survey on Twitter activity done by Trendrr proclaimed the top ads to be those for Boost Mobile, Emerald Nuts, and Disney’s Alice & Wonderland.

• Some companies that didn’t even have ads on the Super Bowl this year, like Turbo Tax, Mazda and Pepsi, generated significant chat on Twitter by running paid search ads on keywords related to products that did.

• USA Today’s Ad Meter had the Snickers spot, featuring Betty White and Abe Vigoda, as the consensus winner.  And I thought Abe Vigoda was dead.

• Reprise Media, which measures levels of integration between TV ads and Web (search and social media), proclaimed Boost Mobile, E-Trade and Google the big winners.

• Radian6, another company that monitors online activity, claimed that Doritos was the most effective brand to advertise on the Super Bowl because the product is most relevant.

• A Wall Street Journal poll indicated the most popular spot was for Audi, with the green police.

• The Kellogg School Super Bowl Ad Review, done by graduate students, selected Google as the best spot, followed by the E-Trade commercial.  On a personal note, if I never see another advertisement with talking babies it will be too soon.

• On further examination of other ad reviews, the Budweiser horses, men without pants and the house built with beer cans all showed up as winners, depending on the source and criteria.

The one measure I’ve never been able to find on Super Bowl ads however, is how much added revenue can be attributed to these ads, or how much sustainable brand equity.  My sense is the only real winners this year, as in past years, were the TV network, ad agencies and the two previously unknown amateur film producers from Minneapolis who did the samurai snack attack spot.