Finally, the action on the field was more exciting than the commercials. The last time that happened was in 2004 when Janet Jackson’s wardrobe malfunction exposed her breast on national (global?) TV.

Coincidentally, that was also the last time Monster ran a Super Bowl ad. Coincidentally(?) it was also the year that Monster’s commercial (costing $2.3 million to air) placed in the bottom five on USAToday’s Super Bowl Ad Meter poll. The next year, in Super Bowl XXXIX (39, for the Roman numeral challenged among us), CareerBuilder made its debut with two monkey ads that catapulted it into the top 10 best ads.

Now, five years later, Monster returned to the Super Bowl with an ad featuring a moose head in the boss’ office with the other end of the moose in the face of a (soon to be active) jobseeker. CareerBuilder finally abandoned its monkeys alltogether, running an ad that illustrated the symptoms of job fatigue, including punching a stuffed koala in the face.

Air time this year was $3 million for a 30 second spot.

Here’s the Monster ad, which USA Today rated 6.95, not far off the 7.37 the CareerBuilder ad got, but enough to put it eight positions behind.

The CareerBuilder ad got somewhat more respect. Spike.com users rated it higher than Monster, but still out of the top. USA Today’s Ad Meter rating had it in 13th place with a score of 7.37.

Monster also ran a “Director of Fandemonium” ad that was a marketing co-promotion with the NFL. It’s a contest in which the winner gets free game tickets, an on-field appearance at next year’s Super Bowl, $100,000 signing bonus, and more. There are also 32 winners of two tickets each to every home game of their favorite NFL team. The ad drives viewers to nfl.monster.com to enter.