• by Steve McClellan  @mp_mcclellan, February 5, 2014

If “funny is money,” then four brands in particular should hear their cash registers ringing loudly in the wake of the Super Bowl, according to a just-out analysis from Annalect, the Omnicom Media Group data analysis unit.

The four funniest ads in the game were Audi’s “Doberhuahua,” Doritos’ “Time Machine,” RadioShack’s “The Phone Call” and Volkswagen’s “Wings,” according to the Annalect report. Those four ads each achieved scores of 100, the highest score possible for this particular study.

Among ads perceived as “confusing,” one in particular stood out -- Maserati’s “Ghibli-Strike.” Its total ad score was 75. No other ad came close, per the Annalect tabulation, although a number of ads scored a 50 in that breakout, including  Budweiser’s “Heroes Welcome,” Coca-Cola’s “Going All The Way,” Go Daddy’s “Puppet Master,” and “Body Builder,” the SodaStream ad, and spots for T-Mobile (with Tim Tebow) and Wonderful Pistachios.

Several ads shared the top ranking for “easy to understand,” including Jaguar’s “Villains,” the Bank of America ad featuring the rock band U2, Bud Light’s “Cool Twist,” DreamWorks “Need For Speed,” and the M&Ms “Delivery” spot.

The most liked actors in the game’s ad lineup, per the report, were Stephen Colbert, who appeared in the Wonderful Pistachios spot, and Scarlett Johansson, who starred in the game’s SodaStream commercial. Movie ads for the new “Spider Man” (Sony) and “Transformers” (Paramount) sequels shared top billing in the most-liked actors breakout.

The analysis also reported results for perceptions such as sexiest, inspirational and most offensive among other segments.

In the viewed-on-YouTube department, Budweiser’s “Puppy Love” won hands down. The Annalect rundown showed that the spot was viewed nearly 30 million times on YouTube through Feb 2. Only one other ad had views in the double-digit millions, per this report, and that was the “Nice” spot for Hyundai Elantra, with 11.2 million-plus views.

The analysis also broke out different click averages among social media, and how an array of brand perceptions were enhanced, or not, as a result of the ads. Annalect said the methodology for the brand and ad perceptions analyses were based on the same crowdsourcing technique that Yelp and Foursquare use to do location descriptions.

Further breakouts can be perused here.