• by Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, February 7, 2005

More than half of Americans consider watching Super Bowl commercials and spending time with friends and family during the game more important than the game itself, according to the results of a survey of more than 1,500 people by comScoreQ2, the survey research division of comScore Networks. Overall, 28 percent of the respondents said that watching the ads was their favorite part, versus 49 percent who cited watching the game and 23 percent who preferred the socializing.

However, among female viewers, a greater percentage (38 percent) preferred the advertising to the game (31 percent).

Favorite Aspect Of The Super Bowl

                  Men    Women    Total 
The Game          66%      31%      49% 
The Ads           18%      38%
28% 
Socializing       16%      30%      23% 

Source: comScoreQ2 survey of 1,530 adults conducted Jan. 28-31. Not all columns equal 100 percent, due to rounding.

Asked which ads they most looked forward to watching during last night's game, the vast majority of consumers chose Budweiser/Bud Light, followed by Pepsi/Pepsi Light and McDonald's.

Regarding references to last year's infamous half-time show wardrobe malfunction, 63 percent of respondents said they believed that Anheuser-Busch made the right call in not running an ad it produced that spoofed the incident.

In fact, a majority of respondents believed the Federal Communications Commission either acted appropriately or not harshly enough in fining CBS $550,000 for the incident.