Teams have been preparing their game plans and it's time to see which of the 60 teams will win. No, not the Packers or Steelers -- Go Pack! -- but PepsiCo (PEP), Anheuser-Busch (BUD), General Motors (GM) and all the other companies competing for the best spots in one of TV's most expensive marketing moments, costing an estimated $3 million dollars per 30 second spot.

For those not into football, the ads in the Super Bowl game can be more amusing than the game itself as advertising teams compete for attention, show their best efforts and even get rated by numerous online sites. Last year, Doritos (owned by PepsiCo), and E-Trade (ETFC) did well, and Anheuser-Busch seems to always have a Clydesdale horse in the running.

So, on Friday I took a look at the potential of some Super Bowl advertisements, which leaves today to digest the commercials and say who we thought had the best commercial.

First things first, congratulations New Orleans -- what a win. Second of all, I need to make an editorial comment before I reveal my thoughts on the best commercial: what's up with all the guys in their underwear? I saw enough tighty whities in the span of two minutes during the first half to last the rest of my life. I know one thing, I am not going to go to CareerBuilder.com or wear Dockers thanks to the visage of pasty white men in their underwear standing at the water cooler or singing about pants.

Who's ready for some football? The Super Bowl is this weekend, and you know what that means -- commercials that we will all be talking about on Monday morning. In fact, we all know someone who says they watch the game for the commercials.

CBS announced earlier this week that it sold out all the in-game spots, but a few pre- and post-game spots remained. How much money did this make for CBS (CBS)? Roughly $200 million, and that is a low-end estimate. We all know why advertisers flock to the Super Bowl, as more than 98.7 million viewers tuned in last year. No matter who is in the Super Bowl, people watch the game and the commercials -- and eventually they may buy the products from the ads.

Despite the media slump that's been running alongside the worldwide recession, CBS (CBS) isn't having any trouble moving ad space for the Super Bowl.

The event is still more than a month from now, but the network reports having only a few commercial slots left for the big game. In fact, 95% of its 62 slots have moved, even with two of the most committed Super Bowl advertisers -- Pepsi (PEP) and General Motors (GRM) -- bowing out of the action. The first half is already sold out completely.

I didn't watch much of the Super Bowl, but my husband called me in to watch the GoDaddy ads; I have several domains registered through the company, and they were ... memorable. It was of little surprise that, as soon as I reacted in horror to the courtroom advertisement in which a woman, with obvious breast enhancements, shows the court a little too much of her cleavage, I started seeing the "tweets" from dozens of the people I follow on Twitter. Those who weren't already divested of GoDaddy claimed outrage, and began to wonder if they should pull their domains.

This morning, I watched in amazement as "#nodaddy" became a trending topic on Twitter. Not only were both men and women in equal numbers angry about the misogynistic ad, but people were actually changing their domain registrar; a difficult process that can take hours of waiting on hold. A list of GoDaddy alternatives was making the rounds; no one at all was suggesting they'd buy a domain from the company because of salacious excitement.

Naturally, the Twitter audience is likely already familiar with the company, so the simple name recognition play the company continues to chase wouldn't work with the million-strong "niche." But perhaps this niche is also the sort which registers domain names in enough quantities to affect the company's sales; in my opinion, it was an attention-getter that went so far over the edge, sales are now hurtling toward a chasm. (Here is a chart of gains and losses in top domain companies; tomorrow's figures will be telling, but for now, losses nearly equal gains, whereas they are usually about half.) Whether or not GoDaddy survives the firestorm of negative opinion, one thing is certain: we now know where the line is. Also, women both watch football, and register domain names, and future ad companies might do well to remember this.

This post is part of our Ads Gone Bad series. Share your thoughts and memories of this ad in the comments, and be sure to check out our other posts on marketing gone wrong.

In 2005, internet registrar GoDaddy.com made advertising history when its commercial showing a busty model struggling to keep her top on as she "testifies" before a group of politicians about the company's advertising plans proved too hot for the Super Bowl.

The spot was so racy and tasteless that Fox pulled it from its telecast of the game between the New England Patriots and Philadelphia Eagles before it was shown a second time. How the network that brought the world such tasteful programs as "Married By America" had the nerve to pass judgment on GoDaddy is beyond me.

General Electric Co. (NYSE: GE)'s NBC Universal unit will charge $3 million per 30-second advertising spot in the 2009 Super Bowl, according to the Wall Street Journal (subscription required). Is it me, or does that strike anyone as particularly insane? The deal is this: I would be that many disinterested fans watch the Super Bowl just for the ads alone. The reason? These are the best of the best, attention-grabbing and inventive commercials.

So, why don't ad agencies and PR flacks do this the rest of the year? The only Super Bowl ad that stuck in my mind this year was Tide's 'talking stain" ad, which probably cost a few dollars to produce and was enormously effective. The cost of the campaign was the cost of the ad, of course. All those other advertisers that spend millions on Super Bowl ads this year? Can't remember one of them.

The price for a 2008 Super Bowl 30-second ad spot was $2.7 million, so NBC is upping the game here a bit. Is that ad inventory worth it? With media changing all the time, television is still a lucrative game, and smart advertisers are combining the web and television into complementary market platforms. Like the Tide commercial referenced above, the entire ad was designed to drive traffic to MyTalkingStain.com, not to your local supermarket to buy the product. That's smart marketing. If you spent $3 million for an ad, would you want the impact of the web to somehow be involved? I thought so -- but not all ads do, apparently.

General Motors' (NYSE: GM) GMC had an ad on last night's Super Bowl for the first time in years. It cost something in the neighborhood of $5 million to broadcast, and if you're a GM stockholder, you might want to ask: why did GM waste so much money?

The ad (you can see it below) is a spare, black and white cartoon of a human figure rolling a large boulder up a hill. The figure works immensely hard, pushing the rock for over 45 seconds -- an eternity in Super Bowl ad time. Finally, he gets the rock to the peak of the mountain. Fade to a white GMC Yukon hybrid, which, according to the ad, gets 50% better mileage than a regular Yukon.

The opening of a new ad campaign designed to attract the African American community to The Coca-Cola Company (NYSE:KO) products will be unveiled during Sunday's Super Bowl. Titled Timeline: Especially Today, the ads will honor historically important achievements by African Americans, as well as the key role they continue to play in our country's success.

While they haven't explicitly tied the ads to Black History Month, the timing seems obvious. These ads are part of a campaign that will continue throughout the balance of 2007.

In 2000, Coca-Cola settled a race discrimination lawsuit for what was, at that time, a record $192 million for charges of inequitable pay, promotions and performance reviews. Since then, they have aggressively pursued a more positive image in the black community with support for programs and facilities such as The National Underground Railroad Freedom Center, The Apollo Theater Foundation, and Art of Harmony.

Advertisers are busy teasing viewers and the press with hints about the ads they will unveil during Superbowl XLI next Monday night. The ads, which will bring CBS Corporation (NYSE:CBS) up to a reported $2.6 million per half-minute, are reputation makers/breakers for companies such as GoDaddy and Pets.com. (Remember Sock Puppet? And we didn't believe there was an e-bubble!)

This year's biggest spender is, once again, Anheuser-Busch (NYSE:BUD) for its Budweiser beer. Don't expect more Bud Bowl silliness or a Clydesdale kickoff, though. After a couple of years of pitching quality, Bud is likely to use humor to push the suds this time, with stars such as Dale Earnhardt Jr., Jay-Z, and Carlos Mencia.

Anheuser-Busch, the exclusive alcoholic beverage sponsor until 2012, has purchased five minutes to split between Bud and its skinny cousin, Bud Light.

Other companies planning to unveil new ads include Pepsi (NYSE:PEP), the halftime show sponsor who will offer a jewel-encrusted Pepsi Super Can worth 100 grand, Doritos, Cadillac, Motorola, FedEx (NYSE:FDX), and Sprint.

In a nice twist on ad development, the NFL ran a contest inviting fans to send in pitches for what they thought would make great Superbowl ads. A video of the winner, Gino Bona's, pitch is up on their site.