Amid mounting anger about the capability, at least two are resisting. Fox and NBC both said Wednesday they won’t accept ads promoting the satellite-TV operator’s new digital video recorder that contains the ad-skipping capability.

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The feature, dubbed “Auto Hop,” is an advance on existing ad-skipping features on digital video recorders, which have been widely available for several years from cable and satellite operators. For existing DVRs, consumers have to manually press a fast forward button to speed through the commercial breaks. Timing the fast forward can be difficult and viewers can still see scenes from ads.

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But during last night’s super-media-saturated Super Bowl, I somehow managed to ignore digital media.

This wasn’t intentional (and it was very unlike our previous Footballmer dual-liveblog extravaganza, during which I balanced a laptop with a smartphone with 3-D glasses). The original plan was to watch the game at home and simultaneously monitor my multiple feeds. During the pregame festivities, I even used Foursquare to gauge how many people had already checked into a Boston-themed bar in downtown Manhattan.

Then a friend called and urged me to join him at a neighborhood bar. I brought along a tablet, its interface dotted with Super Bowl-related apps, on which I could keep an eye on the online stream. My Twitter app was open on my smartphone, and I eagerly awaited the smart and sassy commentary from the Twitterverse.

But once the game started, something happened. I decided to actually watch the game on TV and converse with the people around me. My phone was at hand, of course, in the event that someone might call or email with news, but I didn’t check my many apps.

I also paid attention to the commercials — even the ones I’d already seen on the Internet — and listened for the reactions of my fellow viewers.

By the end of the night, I had tweeted exactly once.

Apparently, my digital defection put me in the vast minority: My AllThingsD colleague Peter Kafka reports that social media commentary last night increased sixfold from the previous year’s Super Bowl broadcast. There were so many tweets flying at the end of the game that a new record for simultaneous Twitter messages was set; in television ratings, Super Bowl XLVI turned out to be the most-watched program in TV, with 111.3 million viewers.

But last night — even without reading updates on Facebook or Twitter — I sensed that the Audi “Vampire Party” ad was likely a winner, that people liked the idea of a slingshot-bound baby snatching a bag of Doritos, and that the newest Go Daddy commercial didn’t exactly resonate. According to data from the CNBC/Collective Intellect Super Sunday Ad Tracker, Doritos ads captured 15.8 percent of all engaged consumers, and the Go Daddy ad was deemed “offensive.”

Anecdotally, people like dogs. Also, Ferris Bueller triggers nostalgia in some, even if they could care less about Honda’s CR-V. And all you need to do is talk to people to get a feel for this. According to Hulu, “The Bark Side” and “Matthew’s Day Off” were the most-liked ads of the game.

Some people thought Madonna’s half-time “Vogue”-ing was impressive; others felt it was arthritic. This was later supported by postgame social media analysis from Networked Insights. But everyone I saw was glued to it, nonetheless — TiVo says so, too.

I knew that Tom Brady’s performance would be a hot topic of discussion, and that New Yorkers were pumped about the Giants’ victory, not because of Facebook status updates, but because when I walked through midtown after the game ended, the whoops and cheers could be heard for blocks.

Fortunately, I was not bound by my job to liveblog, tweet, tumble, update, text, post, buzz, pin or ping about the the big game. (AllThingsD’s Ina Fried, however, did an excellent job of liveblogging the Super Bowl for us.)

I’m sure if, say, CNBC’s Darren Rovell said, “I decided not to report on the game and just watch instead!” his bosses might have a different reaction than mine would. Not only that, but a strong voice in the field of sports business reporting would be sorely missed.

I doubt mine was missed all that much last night.

Generally, I enjoy monitoring — and contributing to — Twitter feeds while I watch live TV. I used Twitter while I watched the most recent State of the Union address. I followed along while the news of Osama bin Laden’s death was unfolding. And I chimed in during last year’s Academy Awards and March Madness games. I think the people I follow on Twitter are some of the brightest in the biz, so to speak, and I usually glean some good insights by following their tweets.

Unaccountably, last night, I just didn’t. And it ended up being the same game it would have been if I had been engaged in social media. I’m wondering if I didn’t even have a bit more fun because I communicated face to face instead of reflexively checking my little screens.

Even though I immediately returned to the social media water cooler this morning, enjoying a social Super Bowl in the old-fashioned sense of the term seems a good reminder that we don’t always need to be connected to feel connected.

(Image credit: Rickshaw_Man) | Flickr

The list is based on my own taste, and in no particular order, so feel free to share the ones that made you snicker the most.

Admittedly, they are much more bearable to watch now that the holidays are over and they no longer serve as a reminder for all of the things you have left to do.

So, sit back and enjoy!

Wal-Mart makes fun of the ugly Christmas sweater:

Target gets you into shape for fighting the crowds in its Black Friday commercial:

Apple, which was one of the biggest retail winners this holiday, demonstrated how Santa would use Siri:

EBay showed how its mobile application could avoid awkward gifting:

Best Buy fueled people’s competitive spirit in a game of Mom versus Santa:

And, finally, Amazon says it’s better to receive than give:

The spots will appear on “Top Gear,” “SportsCenter,” “Tosh.0,” “The Daily Show,” “Top Chef” and “The Rachel Zoe Project.”

The campaign’s tagline is “When it’s on your mind, it’s on eBay.”

We knew that the ad campaign was coming. While eBay hasn’t advertised in awhile, it decided now is the right time, after spending the last year redesigning its site to no longer focus exclusively on auctioning off used goods.

In fact, 62 percent of eBay’s current listed items are being sold for a set price, and 70 percent are new.

The ad campaign, which will also feature QR codes and online ads — including YouTube and Yahoo homepage takeovers — was created by independent San Francisco ad agency Venables Bell & Partners.

It’s not too shocking that eBay is targeting mobile users for this campaign.

This holiday season will likely be the biggest shopping event ever for mobile (only because it’s still so new), with tablets driving a lot of so-called “couch commerce.”

By the end of the year, eBay expects mobile sales to exceed $4 billion. Other e-commerce leaders, such as Amazon, are not as vocal about their mobile revenues, but are equally investing in applications and tools for shoppers to use on the go.

EBay’s apps have been downloaded 50 million times and generate an astonishing amount of traffic — one purchase is made every second. That breaks down to a pair of shoes sold every nine seconds, and 2,000 cars every week.

The commercials, which will start running in the third and fourth quarters in the U.S. and Europe, will be designed to raise awareness around the brand, which has been a little overshadowed recently by PayPal, which has been considered to have larger growth prospects.

In an interview, eBay’s CEO John Donahoe told me that for the past few years, the company has been focused on improving the user experience, and when they saw a pick-up in spending from its current user base, it would begin to increase marketing.

It’s hit that inflection point, he said. ”It’s not your mother’s eBay anymore.”

While Donahoe promised that won’t be the company’s new tagline, he said the campaign will help people’s understanding of eBay. ”Seventy percent of our products are fixed price and 70 percent of our products are new items. A lot of people haven’t used it in five years, and still think that its an auction site focused on used items. We’ll use this to tell them what eBay is like,” he added.

The commercials also will be used to promote its mobile business, which is expected to hit $4 billion in revenues by the end of the year.

The San Jose-based company made the announcement in conjunction with its second-quarter financial results released today.

During the quarter, it surpassed its own expectations for the period and revised its revenue projections for the year, which now surpass most Wall Street expectations. In the first quarter, revenues totaled $2.76 billion, growing 25 percent over the same period a year earlier when revenues totaled $2.2 billion.

However, any potential lift in profits was offset by acquisition costs.

The company reported a second-quarter profit of $283 million, decreasing 31 percent over the year-ago period when it made $412 million.

The company has been on a shopping spree of its own, buying six companies in six months.

Most recently, it purchased Zong, a carrier-billing provider, for $240 million in cash. Its largest acquisition in that period was of GSI Commerce, which provides services to merchants and brands, and cost more than $3 billion. GSI Commerce will make up its third business unit after eBay and PayPal.

eBays stock price traded down 59 cents to close at $33.17 a share, before the release was sent out after normal trading hours.

Data-gathering firms and technology companies are aggressively matching people’s TV-viewing behavior with other personal data—in some cases, prescription-drug records obtained from insurers—and using it to help advertisers buy ads targeted to shows watched by certain kinds of people.

At the same time, cable and satellite companies are testing and deploying new systems designed to show households highly targeted ads.

The goal: emulate the sophisticated tracking widely used on people’s personal computers with new technology that reaches the living room.

One of the most advanced companies, Cablevision Systems Corp., has rolled out a system that can show entirely different commercials, in real time, to different households tuned to the same program. It can deliver targeted ads to all the company’s three million subscribers concentrated in New York, Connecticut and New Jersey.

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The commercial comes at a time when a feud could be developing between Apple and publishers regarding how books, newspapers and magazine subscriptions are sold on iOS devices.

Whereas Amazon may have to share up to 30 percent of sales on some content with Apple if it was sold on the iPad, it will clearly profit from everything sold on its own hardware.

If I were them, I’d be pushing the Kindle right now, too.

The 30-second spot called “The Book Lives On,” features young hipsters, quite ridiculously holding a Kindle while walking a handrail like a tightrope or jumping through the air.

I guess that means it is durable.

But the more serious moments occur when a woman can’t read her tablet [insert iPad here] in a cafe because the screen has too much glare. Other benefits that are mentioned are that it can be read in bright sunlight and the battery life last for up to a month.

Of course, the Kindle is a single-purpose device used for reading books and other periodicals, whereas the iPad offers a much richer experience for browsing the Web and downloading apps.

?

The commercials, featuring Cuba Gooding Jr., Elizabeth Hurley and Timothy Hutton, are being compared to Kenneth Cole’s now infamous tweet, which used the Cairo hashtag to publicize its spring shoe collection.

It was Groupon’s commercial featuring Hutton that by far drew the most criticism. UPDATE: The company will shortly announce that it is pulling this ad in particular.

In the 30-second clip, Hutton says that while Tibetan culture is in jeopardy, “they still whip up an amazing fish curry, and since 200 of us bought at Groupon.com, we’re each getting $30 worth of Tibetan food for just $15…in Chicago.”

From what we’ve heard, the Chicago-based company doesn’t believe the commercials were misguided, but rather that it made a mistake by not directing folks to a Web site, where it was raising money for certain causes and matching up to $100,000 in donations. The site, SaveTheMoney.org, should have been mentioned in the commerciasl instead of expecting consumers to make the jump on their own from groupon.com to a link on the side of the page.

UPDATE 2: In a blog post today, CEO Andrew Mason tried to address the feedback. “We would never have run these ads if we thought they trivialized the causes–even if we didn’t take them as seriously as we do, what type of company would go out of their way to be so antagonistic?”

In a blog post written yesterday, Mason wrote that there’s also a connection between the commercials and the company’s roots.

Groupon was born out of the Point, a Web site that helps organize people to raise money or bring people together for a particular cause. Humor is also second nature, since its daily offers are often lighthearted and written by aspiring comedians.

However, this time, the humor of the commercials, which were directed by mockumentary expert Christopher Guest, was clearly lost.

In the other two ads, Cuba Gooding Jr. saves half on a whale-watching expedition, and Elizabeth Hurley compares deforestation in the Brazilian rain forest to a bikini wax. “Not all deforestation is bad,” she says.

A vast majority of comments on Facebook and Twitter called the ads “classless,” “disappointing” and “disgusting,” and accused Groupon of finding ”cultural genocide hilarious.” Many asked for an apology and are calling people to action by encouraging them to saying no to Groupon and yes to its competitor LivingSocial.

Finding a positive comment on Groupon’s Facebook page is rare. Although it shows that 123 people “like” the commercial, there are 137 comments, mostly negative.

Whether any damage has been done, it’s hard to say–much less quantify. Is Groupon worth less than it was the two days ago (or, heaven forbid, a couple of months ago, when Google was willing to pay $6 billion for the two-year-old company)?

Any publicity is good publicity, right?

Groupon’s Super Bowl ad, which cost $3 million alone to run and even more to produce, has continued to be viewed far after the game, getting passed along on Twitter and Facebook.

That makes it successful from at least one standpoint.

It’s also questionable as to how much of an audience it’s reaching–good or bad. Arguably, it’s still small. According to YouTube, it’s not one of the most-watched Super Bowl ads. Even the Tibetan commercial has only 41,451 views on YouTube, compared with Volkswagen’s promo, which featured a pint-size Darth Vader and received more than 16 million views.

LivingSocial, which had an ad right before kickoff, seems to be registering even less with users. In fact, its Twitter feed is more likely to mention Groupon’s commercial than its own.

However, Groupon is also not the only one using a bit of off-humor. LivingSocial’s tagline was: “LivingSocial changed my life. It could change yours, too.”

In the beginning, it features a bearded, gruff-looking man who says his addiction to getting 50 to 70 percent off started a year ago. At the end, he’s a cross-dresser wearing a red sequined dress with red pumps.

For starters, it’s getting everyone–or at least everyone I pay attention to on Twitter*–to talk about LivingSocial. (Groupon who?) And given that Amazon has already handed over a big chunk of money to the daily deals start-up, this sort of seems like the two sides are just swapping dollars, anyway.

Still, this gives us an excellent opportunity to rerun the classic “Saturday Night Live” Bubble 1.0 ad, which didn’t even run during the first bubble. It dates way, way back to 1988. And technically, it’s not about a money-losing operation, but one that doesn’t make any money (at least on a per-transaction basis).

Still, the “the answer is simple: volume” catchphrase became one of the signature lines of the Kozmo.com, Pets.com, etc. era a decade later. And it seems like we may have to revive it again.

Bonus clip! Here’s the first one of the ads. Catchphrase-free, but still awesome.

*An admittedly small subset of the world. But still.

Looks like Palm is rolling out a new ad campaign. The first ad debuted on the Web a few moments ago and it’s an enormous improvement over the company’s previous efforts.

Gone is Palm’s (PALM) I-am-the-White-Witch-of-Narnia-FEAR-ME spokeswoman and her oblique messaging, replaced by a hip Everywoman and a new slogan: “Life moves fast. Don’t miss a thing.”

No idea how this will play in the market, but it’s certainly clearer in its messaging and far less disquieting than its predecessors.

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this post incorrectly suggested the ad mentioned above was part of Palm’s “Project JumpStart” campaign, an initiative intended to drive Palm’s sales volume, which has been rather weak lately.

They’re not nearly as clever as their predecessors–“There’s a Map for That” and “Island of Misfit Toys”–but they share the same ridiculing tone and continue to perpetuate the idea that AT&T’s (T) network is incapable of handling the flood of data generated by Apple (AAPL) iPhone users.

Directly below, Verizon’s (VZ) latest AT&T-bashing ads, both obvious spoofs of classic ad industry campaigns.

“Shadows” is running on national TV.

“Big Red” is running online as a viral campaign.

What lame Luke Wilson ad will AT&T come up with to parry these, I wonder.

PREVIOUSLY:

• AT&T, Verizon Drop “There’s a Map for That” Suits
• AT&T Awarded Hug and a Box of Tissues in Verizon Ad Case
• Verizon to AT&T: Do Yourself a Favor and Shut Up
• Frosty’s Winter Litigation Wonderland: AT&T Demands Verizon Pull Holiday iPhone Ads [With Full Complaint]
• Verizon Banishes iPhone to Island of Misfit Toys
• Verizon on AT&T Suit: There’s a Word for That. “Junk.”
• Verizon to iPhone Users: “Want Five Times More 3G Coverage? There’s a Map for That.”

How do we know they are fake? Well, we don’t, actually. A commenter on my own tablet story posted a link to this YouTube video, which features a 360-degree view of a tablet-like device and some paintball splotches that are similar to the graphics on the invite for the Apple event. And, typical of Apple commercials, the spot features a catchy tune from an indie-ish band (in this case, it’s “Someday I Won’t Exist” by Cola-Cola).

But Gizmodo cried foul about a similar YouTube video from a super legit-sounding site called nowhereelse.fr, saying the tablet depicted in it “has USB ports in the back that would necessitate a device twice as thick as the one shown” (we’ll take their word for it) and “looks faker than Heidi Montag.” Well, all right, then. Driving another nail into the coffin is TechCrunch, which noted that the translation from French on the nowhereelse site reads: “in the meantime, here’s what an advertisement might look like….” Whoops.

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In an interview with the Financial Times, O2 CEO Ronan Dunne said the company has seen an 18-fold increase in data traffic since the beginning of the year, most of it driven by super-smartphones like the iPhone. “Where we haven’t met our own high standards then there’s no question, we apologise to customers for that fact,” Dunne said. “But it would be wrong to say O2 has failed its customers en masse.”

Well, that’s one way of looking at it. The thousands of smartphone users who lost data service just a few days ago might see things a bit differently, though. Anyway, O2–like AT&T in the U.S.–is doing its best to contain the public relations damage arising from such outages. Dunne says the carrier has added an additional 200 mobile base stations in London to help it meet data demand and has been working with its infrastructure suppliers on network tweaks to improve data service.

Wise moves. Best to act quickly and get out ahead of issues like these, which can become PR nightmares very quickly. As AT&T recently learned, network congestion issues make great fodder for the advertising campaigns of rivals. Wouldn’t want Vodafone (VOD) running its own version of Verizon’s (VZ) nasty “There’s a Map for That” commercials, now would we?

The dismissal comes two weeks after a court ruled that while Verizon commercials might be “sneaky,” they were not really deceptive. Seems the “irreparable harm” AT&T claimed to have suffered as a result of the ads wasn’t so irreparable after all.

Both companies declined comment on the matter beyond the dismissals themselves, which are embedded below. Verizon did note, however, that it has begun running a new commercial that features the maps at issue in the suit.

ATT-VerizonDismissal –

dismissal2 –


PREVIOUSLY:

• AT&T Awarded Hug and a Box of Tissues in Verizon Ad Case
• Verizon to AT&T: Do Yourself a Favor and Shut Up
• Frosty’s Winter Litigation Wonderland: AT&T Demands Verizon Pull Holiday iPhone Ads [With Full Complaint]
• Verizon Banishes iPhone to Island of Misfit Toys
• Verizon on AT&T Suit: There’s a Word for That. “Junk.”
• Verizon to iPhone Users: “Want Five Times More 3G Coverage? There’s a Map for That.”

Google’s video site has been trying to convince the TV industry to let it stream individual shows for a fee, multiple sources tell me.

YouTube already lets users watch a smattering of TV shows for free, with advertising. Now it envisions something similar to what Apple and Amazon already offer: First-run shows, without commercials, for $1.99 an episode, available the day after they air on broadcast or cable.

Sources say the site’s negotiations with the networks and studios that own the shows are preliminary. But both sides seem optimistic, since models for such deals already exist. No comment from YouTube.

The biggest stumbling block may be consumers. That’s because Google (GOOG) is talking about streaming the shows instead of letting consumers download them to their computers, as both Apple (AAPL) and Amazon (AMZN) do. But the networks and studios, which control pricing, will want to sell the streamed shows at the same price as downloads; they fear that offering them at a different price will force them to go back and rework their existing deals.

Executives at YouTube and TV insist that the disparity is simply a perception problem and cite studies showing that most people who download TV episodes only watch them once, anyway. But that’s a tough sell.

It’s also possible that YouTube may skirt the issue by launching a TV rental business without the big hits that Apple and Amazon offer. One possibility: The video site could start by moving immediately to long- and mid-“tail” shows and videos that aren’t available other places and don’t have to match existing prices.

No matter how it proceeds, YouTube is likely to be just one of several outlets trying to get consumers to pay for TV on the Web in 2010.

Among others: In addition to its a la carte offering, Apple is trying to create a monthly subscription service. Hulu, the free TV site co-owned by News Corp.’s (NWS) Fox, GE’s (GE) NBC Universal and Disney’s (DIS) ABC, is expected to launch a subscription service of its own. And cable operators like Comcast (CMCSA) will be launching different versions of “TV Everywhere” services, which give subscribers expanded access to online shows.

TV executives are generally enthusiastic about all of the above, since they are meant to create additional revenue streams without threatening the industry’s existing business. That is, they’re supposed to protect existing business from the digital disruption that has ravaged music, newspapers, etc.

But while Web users have an insatiable appetite for video, they’ve yet demonstrate much interest in paying for it. If any of this is going to work, that will have to change.