NEW YORK (AP) — Super Bowl viewers were rubbing their eyes over a TV spot pairing CBS late-night host David Letterman with longtime NBC rival Jay Leno, plus Oprah Winfrey.
Aired early Sunday in the CBS-aired game, the ad depicted Letterman and Leno glumly sharing a couch watching the Super Bowl, with Winfrey between them trying to make peace.
The spot revisits a promo from the 2007 Super Bowl with Letterman and Winfrey watching the big game.
In the new spot, Letterman grumbles, "This is the worst Super Bowl party ever."
Leno replies that Dave's "just saying that because I'm here."
The spot was secretly taped last week at New York City's Ed Sullivan Theatre, home of Letterman's "Late Show."
Next month, Leno returns to "The Tonight Show" as Letterman's rival.
Even the long-awaited Super Bowl ad from conservative group Focus on the Family came with a punchline Sunday night.
The 30-second "Celebrate family, celebrate life" ad starring Heisman winner Tim Tebow ended with a surprise -- Tim Tebow tackling his mother after she says she nearly lost him during her pregnancy. The pair jokes that they have to be "tough" with all the family has been through.
The commercial sparked debate before it was even broadcast, and some groups called for CBS not to air it.
The ad is the first such advocacy ad to appear in television's most-watched broadcast, which draws about 100 million viewers. It aired early in the first quarter.
The commercial, which shows just Tebow and his mother, Pam, against a white backdrop, does not contain an overt antiabortion message. Instead it sends people to Focus on the Family's Web site, which tells more of the Tebows' story and offers a more straightforward message.
The devout quarterback's mother gave birth to him in the Philippines in 1987 after spurning a doctor's advice to have an abortion for medical reasons.
In other Super Bowl ads, Betty White plays football and a house made of Bud Light cans falls slowly apart.
The commercials got off to a funny start Sunday night on CBS, with companies like Anheuser-Busch and Coca-Cola going straight for chuckles.
Villanova marketing professor Charles R. Taylor says the light-hearted tone is working this year because the ads still manage to tell people what the brands stand for.
Taylor said he had been disappointed in at least the past five Super Bowls in terms of the effectiveness of ads in connecting with products, but this year he's pleased.
He cited a commercial by tiremaker Bridgestone featuring men carrying a whale in the back of their truck, and one by Dove launching its new men's skin care line. He said they were winners because they manage to entertain while telling people about the brands. The ad for Dove, which is owned by Unilever, tells the story of boy growing into a man and telling of signal events in a man's life.
"So far from what I've seen I'm quite positively imrpessed, more than I thought I would be," he said.
A first Super Bowl by ad Google — which rarely does television advertising — has an affecting ad that tells the story of a relationship through a series of Google searches, beginning with "study abroad" and "how to impress a French woman" and ends with "how to assemble a crib."
Not every commercial was strictly humorous. Automaker Toyota aired several pregame ads to reassure worried owners after its brake recalls.
