• by Steve McClellan  @mp_mcclellan, February 6, 2012

TiVo has declared Dorito’s “Man’s Best Friend” Super Bowl ad the most engaging commercial in Sunday night’s big game, televised on NBC.

Like five of TiVo’s other top-10 engaging ads in the Super Bowl, the Doritos spot appeared in the second quarter. The ad, one of two consumer-generated Dorito's spots, featured a dog who bribed a man with Doritos to conceal the whereabouts of the family cat.

A second ad featured a grandmother who slingshots a baby at a tree fort to grab a bag of Doritos chips from a little boy. That ad, which also ran in the second quarter, was third on TiVo’s list of top 10 engaging ads for the game. Sandwiched in between in second place was the M&M’s ad that introduced “Mrs. Brown” to the team of colored chocolate candies.

The most engaging spots, by TiVo’s definition, aren’t necessarily the highest-rated.

The DVR maker said it calculated the engagement level by looking at the bump in viewership for a spot relative to the surrounding 15 minutes of programming, using second-by-second audience measurement data from a sample of 41,666 TiVo households. The spots that delivered the biggest spikes in viewing relative to the content surrounding them were deemed the most engaging. TiVo provided a ranking. but did not disclose actual viewing levels for the ads.

Rounding out the top five most engaging ads on TiVo’s list was the Pepsi ad, entitled “King’s Court,” and featuring Elton John, at  fourth. The VW ad, “The Dog Strikes Back” featured a dog inspired by the carmaker’s Beetle model to get back into shape. Also making the Top-10 list were ads from the National Football League, Acura, Fiat, Chevrolet and E*Trade.

TiVo eported that the halftime show with Madonna was more watched (by nearly 16%) than the game itself. The most-watched play of the down-to-the-wire game was New England Patriots Tom Brady’s desperate and incomplete “Hail Mary “ throw into the end zone with just seconds left on the clock, sealing victory for the New York Giants.