From this year's Doritos spot, about man's best friend. (Yahoo)

According to The Wall Street Journal's Twitter tracker, Doritos, H&M and Chrysler swept the social media retweet competition. The snack foods monolith received a little under 48,500 Tweets and 29 percent of overall sentiment. H&M had some 43,500 Tweets, while Chrysler trailed with roughly 34,000.

The carmaker won audiences over with a new spokesman, Clint Eastwood, who touted Detroit's comeback at "halftime in America."

Yahoo noted buzzworthy submissions from VW and Metlife, among others.

It was a crowded field, but Pepsi definitely won the award for most bizarre use of celebrity spokespeople. The soda giant cast Elton John as a Lewis Carroll-inspired king. King Elton cruelly denies his subjects Pepsi until Melanie Amaro (winner of the "X Factor") sings her heart out, and casts Elton to a dungeon where he has to spend the rest of his life with Flavor Flav (The horror!).

Making fun of vampires feels a bit 2009. But Audi managed to give the joke some new life with its spot. A handsome vampire drives his swanky Audi to a party with his fellow blood-sucking monsters. When he gets there, he accidentally shines the Audi's headlights (which aren't your average everyday headlights, natch) on his friends and before you can say "Team Edward," the vampires go poof just like they were out in daylight.

Doritos cat man's best friend in one of its best commercials. A man discovers his dog might be responsible for a missing cat. The dog, sensing that he might be ratted out, decides to bribe the witness with some Doritos. Everybody wins.

Here's an important tip for Super Bowl commercials. If you can find a way to use lumberjacks sawing a giant sandwich, your add will be judged a success. Kia's Optima commercial, which also employed Motley Crue, women in bikinis, and kickboxer explosions rocked it with maximum machismo.

But the Associated Press' Mae Anderson was underwhelmed. She said releasing the spots early online did away with the element of surprise. 

And the companies that did wait until game day for the "big reveal" didn't take many risks. In fact, most settled on cliché plots with babies, celebrities, sex and humor.

"Advertisers this year are playing it very safe," said Tim Calkins, a professor of marketing at Northwestern University. "They're running spots that are clearly designed to appeal to a broad audience and not to offend."

Seems like a standard strategy for the biggest game of the year. No word yet on how many dollars these commercials will pull in for their companies, but if Super Bowl viewers respond as they typically do, it'll be another lucrative year for the top advertising contenders.

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