In the end, the controversial ad didn’t seem to really be anything. All it had was Tim Tebow’s mom talking about her son before he tackled her. It seemed to be a lot of hype for nothing. My position still holds true, but CBS did well to make the ad seem like nothing.
Effective Response 
There was a great follow-up on Crooks and Liars (http://crooksandliars.com/john-amato/did-cbs-lie-us-about-tim-tebow-draw-nat). Adding further speculation to the issue – what if part of the reason for starting the controversy wasn’t to increase viewership on CBS’ part, but rather to increase the dialogue on the underlying issue itself?
Of course, this could all end up being just a bunch of guesswork but it can’t hurt to ask. After all, CBS’ own press release (as mentioned in the article) described a much different ad than what appeared.
Because the ad was really not that controversial and did not include much of the detail as implied by the pre-Super Bowl hype, I argue that CBS conjured up the publicity to increase viewership. I watched the ad for the first and the last time during the Super Bowl, and I had no idea what it was about. People were required to go online or further research the ad to figure out what it was talking about. I believe that if the controversy was geared towards generating interest and raising questions about the issue itself, the ad would have included much more detail.