For the past few years, Bud Light has encouraged adult Super Bowl watchers to text-message a hotline during the game in order to unlock a “secret” spot, which they could then watch on one of Anheuser-Busch’s websites. The commercials are designed to run on the Internet only - more appropriate to their racy nature than TV.

And they are racy, no doubt. One Bud Light ad from a couple years ago shows guys how to seek forgiveness for making a naughty video with one’s lady friend and then selling it to a chain of video stores. Simple…just get ‘ApologyBot 3000‘ to deliver a Bud Light to the lady.

That was edgy. But this year, has Bud Light crossed a line that shouldn’t be crossed? We’ll let you decide.

In this year’s ad, a guy walks into a convenience store and picks up a six-pack of Bud Light. But before leaving, he also asks the clerk for a pornographic magazine. The situation quickly goes downhill for our hero (antihero?). A cute girl he used to know walks up and is scandalized by his purchase. A creepy guy starts an unwanted conversation about the merits of the magazine.

Then, it really gets embarrassing for the protagonist as he tries to escape the situation: A pistol-wielding robber bursts in and takes him hostage. The TV cameras show up. The evening news identifies him as “local porno buyer Jim Scott” and gets set to air “reactions” from his mother. Humiliation = 100 percent.

As Time magazine writer Belinda Luscombe noted, A-B’s meeting with its advertising agency must have been exceedingly interesting. The premise about the commercial’s hapless Bud Light shopper: “Terrible things will happen to him, and he will be humiliated on national TV, and everyone will know that he - your consumer - is a total deviant.”

The ad never aired on TV, only on BudBowl.com. But it almost immediately migrated to YouTube, where by our count it’s gotten more than 300,000 hits.

Burning questions arise. First, what exactly is the commercial trying to say about Bud Light? What is it saying about Bud Light drinkers? Does the ad have a meaningful message, beyond making Bud Light’s core drinkers - guys roughly aged 21-34 - laugh? In other words, is this good advertising?

We’ll say this for Anheuser-Busch: The commercial definitely made us laugh. Whether it made us want to drink Bud Light…we’ll have to get back to you on that.

More questions: Ads that run exclusively on the Internet seem to have an unofficial license to reach new highs (lows?) of sketchiness. Should this be? In certain cases, Internet-only ads can grab a massive audience. Bud Light’s “Swear Jar,” wherein office workers have to pay a quarter for every curse word, features rampant and ferocious (albeit bleeped-out) cursing. It’s been seen 12 million times. A lot of TV advertisers would kill for that level of exposure.

And now, even if it began its life as a “secret” spot, the “Magazine Buyer” ad is now the very antithesis of secret.

On a philosophical level, there are other issues. Is advertising that is based on shocking people really a good idea? Will brands eventually regret constantly pushing the envelope? What happens when it’s all been done before? If at some point consumers lose the capacity to be shocked, advertisers that use shocking ads might also lose the ability to break through the haze of constant stimulation and entertainment.

Anheuser-Busch told Lager Heads that the “Magazine Buyer” spot carried on the company’s tradition of providing “over-the-top humor on the Internet for contemporary adults looking for a laugh.” The company also said it tested the concept “extensively” to make sure adult consumers appreciated the humor.

As Luscombe points out, marketers are struggling to find ways to make an impression “on a population saturated in all kinds of media.” Thus, the too-hot-for-TV online-only video has become an increasingly common device.

In the Bud Light commercial, all the sexual devices - yes, there are sexual devices - are blurred and the cuss words are bleeped. The commercial was made to be watched by adults. But lo, what is said in the closet is now shouted from the rooftops. And so we come to Luscombe’s story:

[The ad] has attracted little notice thus far, but because it comes from a highly respected American brand, it seems to mark some kind of cultural tipping point, where pornography has soaked so far into the fabric of mainstream culture that it’s no longer seen as a stain. The phenomenon, known as porn creep, is also evident in ads from such companies as American Apparel, Carl’s Jr. and Quiznos.

But Budweiser is a much bigger, better-known brand than any of those companies. For that reason, Lager Heads was a bit surprised that Anheuser-Busch would “go there,” aligning its biggest brand with pornography (at least in the minds of some consumers.) Perhaps we shouldn’t have been surprised.

“The line has gotten really blurred,” anti-pornography activist Donna Rice Hughes told Luscombe. “There’s a whole generation that has been pornified. They don’t think it’s a big deal. Budweiser’s tapping into that.”

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