Re-ordering the Super Bowl commercials in the archive - by your vote!

Hey kids. Since we're gearing up to watch yet another super bowl only for the commercials, I thought I'd do a little re-arranging in our 35 years of super bowl commercials namely making the ads sort by highest voted first.

You can now see the "best of" according to logged in adgrunts on each year. For example, this is the 2005 superbowl commercials, the 2002 superbowl commercials and the 1969 superbowl commercials listed by highest vote first.

Of course, this is also a sneaky way for me to get you guys to vote a little. ;9 Since some years - for example 2000 superbowl commercials, 1997 superbowl commercials and 1994 superbowl commercials have very few votes so one single vote can still make all the difference. Won't you make sure that your favorites are on top? :)

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Anonymous Adgrunt's picture
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Imanaddy's picture

I've now voted on many many ads for you mistress.

Dabitch's picture

I can tell actually - the ones on top of a few years have changed considerably, thanks. ;)

Mets82's picture

You'll know I'll do it. I'll start voting right now.

Dabitch's picture

Might as well reply to emails on the site since other people might be wondering the same thing.

I've been looking at all of the super bowl ads and I've noticed that every time I go back and forth between pages the ordering of the ads is different everytime. I know you're reordering according to popular vote, but literally everytime I go back to a previous page the ads are in an entirely new order. Is this normal? Is the order going to be in a constant stage of flux or will the ads stabalize eventually? I'm wondering because I'm trying to do a content analysis using these ads. Knowing if they will be constantly changing or not would be helpful to me.

Yes, it'll stabilize eventually. Actually it'll stabalize as soon as every damn ad has at least one vote. How do you order by vote when there are no votes? Yeah see, there ya go, even the computer is confused.

Meanwhile if you're doing something else and don't care about the vote, just surf the ads according to topic instead. If a super bowl posting reads like this:

New Jersey Bell Yellow Pages - Juicer (1987) - 0:30 (USA)
Submitted by claymore on Sun, 02/01/1987 - 01:01.
in 1987 super bowl XXI commercials
<---- that's the topic name link.

So instead of roaming 1987 like so:
http://adland.tv/SuperBowlCommercials/1987+super+bowl+XXI+commercials

browse 1987 as the topic.
http://adland.tv/taxonomy/term/76

Allan1's picture

Dabitch wrote:
"Yes, it'll stabilize eventually. Actually it'll stabalize as soon as every damn ad has at least one vote. How do you order by vote when there are no votes? Yeah see, there ya go, even the computer is confused. "

There is a simple way to do that, just add 1 vote to EVERY AD. This way, every ad has a vote, and the proportions are the same. You should have a secondary sort, say, by date/time or by name.

Allan...
"Remember, no matter where you go... There you are." (Buckaroo Banzai).
"Hey, barkeep, 2 Rock Over Hip-Hops and 1 Bach Over Vivaldi with ice."

Dabitch's picture

I thought about that, but the votes are kept in three different tables (argh!), so I lazied out and figured I'd let the masses of adgrunts do their thing (I mean some people here have commented on neary every superbowl ad ever..). Especially since I spent a long time importing all votes on everything from our old system where I had the votes logically, in one single table. These votes don'ts how up until a new vote is added.

The whole by date time/by alphabet can be arranged.

Allan1's picture

What are you using for your database? If it is something that is the least bit relational (e.g. Oracle, SQL Server, MS Access, Clipper, etc.), you can link all the tables together (and differentiate them if you need to), and pop out your results.

You can probably do it with MS Excel, but you may have to make additional changes to the data to get it into one place for analysis. Not too automatic, I'm afraid.

BTW: WHY do you have votes in 3 tables???

Allan...
"Remember, no matter where you go... There you are." (Buckaroo Banzai).
"Hey, barkeep, 2 Rock Over Hip-Hops and 1 Bach Over Vivaldi with ice."

Dabitch's picture

Mysql. BTW: WHY do you have votes in 3 tables??? Oh it's a long story best told over beers where I can bitch for a long time about moving from one cms to another with the help of a little scripting and a lot of cursing. The three tables are someone elses idea, not mine.

Allan1's picture

Åsk:

I should have known from one of the error messages that I got 2 weeks ago. (I haven't done a lot lately with MySQL - I think I have a copy from 2 years ago. But I use SQL everyday for major financial and/or insurance firms, etc).

Send me a copy of your table structures. Indicate keys, and which fields you are using to store the vote and the Ad ID. I'll look into someway to link them together for you (and maybe I'll add the 1 vote to each, and subtract the 1 vote from the end result, after the sort - or I'll force a 0 if null, and just Sort that way).

[Do you store duplicate results in any of the tables?]

No guarantees, as I have a lot to do this week (work, writers' workshop, mother-in-law in physical rehab again...). But if I can get to it, you should have a way to make your sorts easier in the future. [Maybe, just maybe, I can think of a way to put your 3 tables back together without too much fuss].

Allan...
"Remember, no matter where you go... There you are." (Buckaroo Banzai).
"Hey, barkeep, 2 Rock Over Hip-Hops and 1 Bach Over Vivaldi with ice."

adlib's picture

I voted all over 1998... I remember that year being MUCH better than it actually was. I will now be dissapointed by the year 2000.