Just as pillars of the free speech movement -- Larry Flynt, 2 Live Crew, and uh, many others -- have fought to be heard, the interweb has triggered a time when such controversy can move well beyond the court of law and into the broadband-enabled court of opinion.

The elite arena for mass advertising has long been the Super Bowl. From Coke's Mean Joe Green to Apple's 1984 to the E-Trade monkey -- brands have spent and made millions off the big game. And while the game's broadcaster has always reserved the right to refuse those it doesn't deem fit to spend millions-per-second, a more recent phenomenon has seen some brands use their rejection as a selling point in and of itself. Last year, GoDaddy.com used its rejection as a way to get potential customers to log on to its site to see just what sort of elicit behaviour got its ad banned. Sure, it ended up being a bit ZZzzz, but the ruse worked, at least enough to have them go for the same gimmick in 2010.

And let's not even get into the ongoing "controversy" that's preceded Sunday about CBS' inclusion of what many have called an anti-abortion ad from Christian group Focus on the Family, that features NCAA football star Tim Tebow.

After the jump we take a look at a fistful of ads that got stuck with the label "banned," and may still reap the publicity rewards.