As we settle in tonight to watch that annual convergence of hype, hucksterism and, oh, yes, football; as we wait to be inundated with exactly 59 30-second advertisements (to the tune of $70,000 a second) for erectile dysfunction aids, malt beverages and Cadillacs, let's cut through the clutter and ponder the really important question, the one we ask ourselves every year without ever really answering it:

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What makes a great Super Bowl commercial?

Is it the 1984 Ridley Scott-directed Apple ad, shown only once but long remembered? Joe Namath's sexy 1973 shaving-cream spot with Farrah Fawcett? Michael Jordan and Larry Bird playing a mythical game of H-O-R-S-E for McDonald's in 1993? Or is it the "Thanks, Mean Joe" Coke commercial from 1980?

And will the entertainment quotient of this year's Super Bowl event -- perhaps in and of itself the greatest commercial of all time, a stroke of branding genius for the NFL brought to us 39 years ago courtesy of Pete Rozelle -- touch greatness, or, as some thought was the case last year, touch bottom?

Judging from interviews with several noted advertising gurus, expect something somewhere between flash and trash, neither great nor gross. Last year's bare-breast brouhaha with Janet Jackson, coupled with a few borderline revolting commercials featuring a flatulent horse, a crotch-grabbing dog and a man mistakenly undergoing a bikini wax treatment, have prompted some advertisers to pull back from the edge.

"After all, this year's halftime show is Paul McCartney, so clearly you will probably be seeing more subdued advertising," says Amy Shea, research director for Ameritest/CY Research, which tests commercials for companies. "But subdued doesn't have to equal boring. It's a very unique situation for advertising.

"What you can do at the Super Bowl that you can never do any other time is to buy attention."

Advertisers wishing to score with viewers must always remember two things, she said: Know your audience, and remember that entertainment means nothing if your audience doesn't remember the brand.

While advertisers for insurance or financial services companies might struggle with the 180 million-strong Super Bowl audience, companies like Anheuser-Busch can't help but win. While skewing older and more female than regular-season football games, it's overwhelmingly an audience of beer drinkers.

Budweiser, which has had exclusive national advertising rights to Super Bowl beer advertising since 1989, has tapped into that market superbly, says Peter Sealey, co-director of UC Berkeley's Center for Marketing & Technology.

"Over the years, the Bud Light ads have stayed on message: that a beer drinker will go to any extreme to drink a Bud Light. They're product-centric, they reinforce what they stand for, they're memorable, and there's a hook which you recall the next day at the water cooler," Sealey says.

While beer drinking is part of the American tradition of watching the Super Bowl, ads that detract from that experience can "ruin the moment," added B.J. Bueno, a marketing consultant.

Budweiser's famous "Whassup" ad in 2000 "became part of the culture immediately," he added. Whereas, "if you're sitting in your room after a touchdown and an ad comes on for Overstock.com telling you to 'shop cheap!,' that is not going to resonate in the same way as going to a Bud Light transition."

The "Whassup" ad worked, Ameritest's Shea said, because "it was more like a short film than an ad, and the audience it was targeting -- men age 18 to 34 -- could relate to these 'cool guys' greeting each other. There was a lot of good, nice, positive emotion that motivated the audience to purchase the beer."

The bottom line, says Shea, is that "emotionally driven ads give the best breakthrough."

Still, there's a risk of going too far toward entertainment and away from product branding, and as the competition increases among advertisers to be the funniest, some are losing out in the end.

"A great commercial has to differentiate your product in a meaningful, dramatic way," says Jack Trout, a marketing consultant based in Greenwich, Conn. "The real problem with the Super Bowl is that it has become an entertainment-driven event where the advertisers are trying to outdo each other creatively, and that's not good advertising, because viewers don't remember the brand."

If anything, Super Bowl advertising is overrated, he says, despite its huge audience, because it doesn't always deliver customers. For example, Trout said, the ad most often cited as the best ever in Super Bowl history -- the Apple ad featuring a voluptuous woman runner who smashes a sledgehammer through a screen -- didn't do much for Macintosh's bottom line. And the Mean Joe Greene ad -- when the Hall of Fame Steelers lineman tossed that towel to the worshipful kid -- didn't help Coke boost its flat sales, either.

Then there was 2000, known as the Dot.com Bowl, when 17 Internet companies paid for the privilege of hawking their services. But even the massive branding power of Super Bowl exposure couldn't protect them from economic ruin.

"During the Dot.com bubble, there were a whole rash of companies all trying to do the same thing, blowing their advertising budgets on ads featuring hand puppets and stupid dogs, and it all went up in a cloud of smoke because they didn't have a viable business product behind it," notes Trout.

This year, only three Internet companies are purchasing ads, one of them Clearinghouse.com, an online job network that is using the Super Bowl to launch a yearlong $200 million campaign with ads parodying dead-end job experiences.

"We think this is the kind of entertaining ad that will get buzz around the water cooler the next day," says Richard Castellini, vice president of consumer marketing for CareerBuilder.com.

Celebrities will be another way to do that, advertisers hope. MBNA Corp., a credit-card issuer, will feature Gladys Knight in one of its ads, and it's rumored -- but not confirmed -- that Brad Pitt will be part of a Heineken commercial airing in local markets. And MasterCard will be flacking its debit card with animated products from the supermarket aisle.

"Mr. Peanut may not be Britney, but he's a celebrity in his own way," says a spokesman for the company.

There are other newcomers this year, such as Volvo, and McDonald's, which hasn't advertised since 1996, will be back. And for the first time, six Hollywood studios will be promoting films -- "the latest ego trip for movie moguls," says Sealey -- even though most won't even be released until after Memorial Day.

"It's too far in advance. People don't decide which movies they're going to go to until the Thursday night before the weekend. They're certainly not going to make a decision to go see a flick three months from now."

Whatever the case, this year has to be better than last year, advertisers say. And while the Janet Jackson wardrobe malfunction was decried by some as overreaction and evidence of declining civilization by others, it has had at least one positive aesthetic effect: Viewers won't have to see Mickey Rooney's bare bottom featured in an ad for the cold medicine Airborne, a commercial that was nixed by Fox.

"Last year was a poor year for entertainment," says Mark Tutssel, vice chairman and deputy chief creative officer at Burnett U.S.A, who is claiming to break new ground this year -- with the five-second commercial touting the V-series Cadillac's ability to go from zero to 60 mph in under five seconds.

"It's generally accepted that there were a lot of bad commercials. And when the eyes of the nation are fixed on your brand, Super Bowl exposure can be as damaging as good for that brand."

Anheuser-Busch's Bob Lachky, the advertising genius behind Budweiser's "Whassup," "Yes, I Am," and other iconic Bud ads, admits he's partly responsible for last year's debacle -- the flatulent horse ad was from his shop.

"Last year we made some bad decisions, we crossed the line, but you have to take the good with the bad," Lachky says, noting that his company has bought a record five minutes' worth of commercials featuring previous winning formulas in new situations: Cedric the Entertainer on a deserted island, and the Clydesdales in a snowball fight.

If you can't remember what you saw during the chaos of the football game, you can look at the commercials again on the NFL Network, which is hosting a 30-minute special immediately after the game. But in the end, when all the Budweiser frogs, the mud-wrestling women and disco-dancing bears have faded into obscurity, the very best commercial ever made will be remembered as one not even allowed on the Super Bowl -- or any television today, says Trout.

"The cowboys have been out there for years as the best," he says. "It was pure simple macho advertising. When the last brand of cigarettes rides off into the sunset, it will be Marlboro."