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The 5 worst ads of Super Bowl 51

The price of a 30 second ad for this year's Super Bowl cost advertisers upwards of $5 million, that's $166,667 per second.

t-mobile justin bieber

We used a subjective determination of taste and a non-scientific measurement of social media enthusiasm to rank the ads we saw during this year's big game.

These are the five worst ads from Super Bowl 51.

5. Michelob Ultra - Our Bar

The Anheuser-Busch brand decided the best way to show it's low calorie beer is healthy was by depicting people working out for nearly the whole ad. That's until the end, where instead of drinking water or some kind of sports drink, the stars of the ad choose to drink a beer. Most crossfit fans will likely say that a beer isn't their beverage of choice after a workout.

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The ad, while beautifully executed, was missing a message behind it and could have just as easily been a commercial for a sneaker brand.

4. H&R Block - Future

Not even the combination of artificial intelligence and Don Draper could have made this ad the right choice to kick off the Super Bowl.

It's not that H&R Block didn't try — the brand filled its Twitter up with Gifs and jokes about accounting.

But as some Twitter users pointed out: it's still accounting.

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3. American Petroleum Institute

"Oil Gushes Art" is the kind of statement that's bound to rile up anyone that has some semblance of thought for the environment. It certainly started a debate.

The problem with API's ad was one of placement. The Super Bowl is a big mainstream event, known to offer viewers emotional ads or light-hearted ads for everyday products. Whereas the API is a trade association currently lobbying Donald Trump to ease regulations on the industry. Did it really need to advertise during the big game?

2. WeatherTech — Tech Team

Turning a coffee cup that almost spills onto the floor of a car into an action movie is the kind of flourish you'd expect from a Super Bowl ad. But this spot is without a celebrity and without any real humor: two essential ingredients for a big game spot of this style.

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Across social media, the ad was criticized for its polarizing tagline: "Made right, in America."

1. T-Mobile

A 30-second ad slot for this year's Super Bowl cost upwards $5 million. By that calculation T-Mobile would have spent around $30 million dollars on its three minutes of advertising, across four separate spots.

For that kind of money viewers didn't get much to see other than celebrity cameos and flat jokes. The peak of those was Justin Bieber's ad, in which he narrates us through the history of celebrations. It includes an appearance of Terrell Owens, making it seem to many as if the NFL star, who filed for bankruptcy in 2012, was doing it just for the money.

Two ads starring Kristen Schaal were criticized for their crass humor — especially during a TV event that attracts scores of young viewers.

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Landing slightly better was the #BagOfUnlimited spot starring Martha Stewart and Snoop Dogg reeling off puns. But the jokes did not quite meet the high bar expected of a Super Bowl ad.

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Email: news@pulselive.co.ke

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