Yesterday I posted a round-up of 10 upcoming Super Bowl spots. Yes, the pre-release of ads is definitely a trend this year, and why not? If you’re paying $3.5 million for 30 seconds (or between six and seven million for 60 seconds), why wouldn’t you try to drum up a little pre-game excitement about your investment?

Almost overnight, nine new ads were released, including Kia’s “Dream Car” (hilarious and awesome), Coca-Cola’s “The Catch” (polar bears), and CareerBuilder’s chimp spot, “Business Trip” (same old, same old). The new spots bring the pre-released ad total to 21, or almost half of the total Super Bowl ad inventory. Check ‘em out below.

E*Trade – “Fatherhood”

Coca-Cola – “The Catch”

Careerbuilder.com – “Business Trip”

Toyota – “Camry Stories”

Chevrolet – “Aliens”

Chevrolet – “Bug Ride”

Chevrolet – “Stunt Anthem”

Kia – “Dream Car”

Lexus – “Beast”

Hyundai – “CPR Car”

Hyundai – “Cheetah”

It used to be, if you shelled a couple million dollars for a Super Bowl ad, you protected that investment by keeping the details about the ad under lock and key until after the game. But now, because of the buzz-generating power of the Internet, more advertisers are releasing their spots days or even weeks before the game.

This year’s ad lineup is no exception, with no fewer than 10 companies offering full-length versions of their ads prior to game time.

ACURA – “Seinfeld vs. Leno”

AUDI – “Vampire Killer”

CHEVROLET – “Happy Grad”

GE – “Power and Beer” and “Louisville”

GO DADDY – “Heaven” and “Body Paint”

SUZUKI – “New Sled”

TOYOTA – “Reinvented”

DORITOS – Two of five “Crash the Super Bowl” finalists

The top vote-getter of the five fan-made spots will appear in the game. Doritos will choose another finalist to also make an appearance. All five finalists can be viewed on the “Crash the Super Bowl” website.

CARS.COM – “Confidence”

The Cars.com spot isn’t available for embedding, but can be viewed on the Cars.com site here.

General Electric has become probably the last company to announce its presence in the Super Bowl ad lineup and the 10th company this year to release its spots before the game (see below).

The pair of 45-second ads shine a spotlight on the hard work of GE employees, and appear to be designed more to fire up internal audiences than to sell whatever it is GE is trying to sell. (Electricity? Giant turbines? Budweiser beer?)

Yes, I said Budweiser beer. The first spot, “Power and Beer,” spends the last 15 seconds talking about how GE “makes the power that makes the beer.” I’m assuming Budweiser somehow pitched in to fund the purchase of this spot. If not, I’d like to tell Budweiser on behalf of General Electric: “You’re welcome.”

The Super Bowl ad lineup includes a roster of national spots – those are the ones that cost $3.5 million each – but it also includes lower-priced ads aired in various regional and local markets. I don’t normally report on local ad buys here on the SpotBowl blog, but a spot airing in Chicago is cool enough to warrant a mention.

The ad (above) comes from FirstBank and instead of pulling out all the stops to capture viewers’ attention, it asks viewers to use the ad time to take a bathroom visit or refill a drink. As reported on BusinessInsider.com, the FirstBank spot proves its seriousness by featuring the FirstBank pitchman “sitting in an armchair, doing mostly nothing.”

As observed by USA Today and multiple other sources, this year’s crop of Super Bowl ads are slightly more mature and risqué that in year’s past. It’s been said, of course, that “sex sells,” but does it really? A recent Wall Street Cheat Sheet article offers an interesting look inside the myth.

According to the article, researchers at the University of Wisconsin (Eau Claire) studies Super Bowl ads from the past 20 years and found that “sexy ads” score 10 percent lower in the “likeability” category compared to more conservative ads.

I’m not sure if that really debunks the “sex sells” myth. After all, the racier ads might be less liked by the masses, but they could end up selling a lot more product among those who prefer a more mature approach. Regardless, it’s definitely something advertisers should consider.

Perhaps GoDaddy should test one of its typical frat boy spots against one featuring puppies and kittens and see which one sells more domain name registrations. Actually, forget it. I think we already know the answer to that one.