Good dadvertising includes fathers in their natural roles without the brand explicitly pointing out that you’re watching a dad that is made better by the advertised product. That’s why the Dove Men+Care “Real Moments” campaign has been a great tent pole in the circus of NCAA March Madness beer advertising.

Starring NBA all-star Dwayne Wade and ESPN college basketball analyst Jay Bilas, the commercials show day-to-day moments of parenthood, told by these two dads.

The Super Bowl, widely regarded as a yearly who’s-who of commercials, proved once again that fathers have a couple of things to piss and moan about in the “dadvertising” world, but that little-by-little, dads are being imagined better. This year, we saw seven major commercials featuring a father in a main role. The result shows an across-the-spectrum image of fathers. This, actually, is a win for dads, believe it or not.

Here, we’ll take a look at the commercials with an honest approach, attempting to let slide what truly doesn’t matter, and getting worked up over all of the right things.

The Olympics have been on for a week now (really, only a week!), and even with all the hub-bub over tape delays, people are glued to their televisions at all hours to see the world compete in everything from archery to wrestling (there was no sport starting with a z, boo hoo). It got us wondering, as we always do elsewhere, how the Olympics would honor dads.

After all, there have got to be a whole lot of Olympians that were coached by fathers, carpooled to their practices by fathers, or at least bought equipment by fathers…right? So, that should translate into viewership and consumers – meaning dads watching the Olympics with their little hopefuls, watching all of the ads, saying “son and/or daughter – tomorrow, we’ll buy one of those products in the commercial.”

Well, we watched, and watched, and then watched some more. At times, we were watching two events picture-in-picture on television, while streaming another on our phone and another on our computer (and another on our laptop)! We sucked up almost everything the Olympics put out there, except for the really long bathroom break we took during equestrian jumping.

We found: the Olympics have definitely been sold to mom this time around, but dad hasn’t been completely forgotten. Really, there’s been one big offender that’s forgotten dads, but we saw it coming and expected it. We’ll explain.

I have been an Apple user for 27 years. I was 5 when I started on my first personal computer, the Apple IIe. But that didn’t stop me from loving the new Google Nexus 7 commercial that I caught during the recent XXX Olympic coverage. Admittedly, I thought this was an iPad 3 commercial when I noticed the whimsical, airy background music in part with the late 30s (ish), grizzly hipster dad wearing plaid. I was like, “Oh, great. How are they going to f*ck this one up.”

See, as a full-time geek, I’m not a fan of the more recent Apple commercials – starting with the “If you don’t have an iPhone, you don’t have an iPhone.” spot. They’re arrogant, elitist and douchey. I cringe every time I see one.

Google is coming up Milhouse at every turn with their advertisements. I love them. So much. However, not enough to disrupt my Apple flow. But I will give them major props starting with the Dear Sophie Chrome commercial of 2011 and the “New Dad” commercial. That “New Dad” one is simply fantastic.

A couple of our readers tipped us off to a recent advertising gaffe that had one baby bottle company in a blowback from both dad bloggers and the breastfeeding folk.

“Your breast don’t have air-vents, why should baby bottles,” asks Bittylab’s website for their BARE bottle. The vent-free bottles are meant to imitate a breast and reduce gas intake by the baby. Sounds great, right? It very well could be, but the product became second-fiddle to the message behind it when Bittylab took to Twitter and started advertising.

Parenting.com‘s Shawn Bean wanted to know why as the only dad-blogger on the site, his blog was dead last on the list. His editor fixed it for him – bumped him up the list. Since then, another dad has started blogging for Parenting.com as well - Matt Villano - and he’s ceremoniously taken on the last place spot.

Bean wonders if this is an act of parentism – that is, in Bean’s words, “the societal belief that one type of parent (i.e. a mother or a father) possesses skills, characteristics and abilities that are superior to the other.”

With a whole crap-ton of dads that still feel as if there’s a bias against them (and of course, moms that then answer “you? YOU? What about me?!”), maybe Bean’s onto something.

Episode 032: Not Safe For Life

This week’s episode covers the following stories on 8BitDad.com for the week leading up to June 5th, 2012: Good On You: JCPenny Features Same-Sex Fathers in Ad / Book Review: Darth Vader And Son / Deaf 2-Year-Old Boy Hears His Mother’s Voice For The Very First Time / Beta Dad – Ruining Daddy Blogging

So JCPenney done did it now. First, they get in trouble with an anti-gay mother’s group for hiring Ellen DeGeneres as a spokesperson (and not backing down). Now, JCPenney launches a Father’s Day ad featuring not one – but two dads. And the kicker is, those dads are gay. Like, gay for each other.

SRSLY, JCPenney, this is an awesome step in the right direction not just for dadvertising, but for advertising as a whole – and 8BitDad salutes you. See the full (uncropped, un8bit’d) ad after the jump.