I was about as impressed with attempts to integrate mobile with this year's Super Bowl as I was with the Green Bay Packers’ effort during their NFC divisional playoff loss to the New York Giants. I was even more prepared to take advantage of the mobile cues than most. I had my iPhone 4S in hand. I had the Shazam app downloaded. I had a QR Code reader downloaded, and I was sitting right next to the TV.

Alas, I was truly amazed at how unrewarding and generally annoying it was to hold my phone up to the television in hopes of getting a little more information about what television spot I was watching, or perhaps the title of a particular song playing during a commercial. Fulfilling an advertiser's call to action while sitting in a room full of friends and family is just not natural and actually takes away from the experience of being at a party. Not to mention, everyone in the room thinks you're an anti-social idiot.

Regardless of what the advertisers say about mobile having reached maturity as a channel, it's a long way from playing any meaningful role during events like the Super Bowl.

It's also immature in other ways. I was amazed to find that my niece and nephew, both teenagers who can usually be found glued to their Android smartphones, didn't have a clue what I was doing when I “shazamed” a commercial. I actually had to show them how to get the free download of Madonna's new song. When I'm ahead of the teenage crowd in these matters, something's just not right.

And if I wasn't shazaming a spot, I was supposed to be scanning a QR code while my father tried in earnest to have a conversation with me about what kinds of moves the Packers will make in the off season. I came to this conclusion: If advertisers one day convince us that scanning a little code on the TV with our mobiles is more important than being courteous and present with those around us, then we will have lost some little bit of our souls. Not to mention, we'll be really boring people.

So should Madison Avenue just give up on integrating mobile with television? After Sunday's game, I'm not sure, but I will say that should they choose to continue on this current route, there will have to be more incentive to act and a heap more innovation to ensure an effortless experience for the end user.

What I saw on Sunday was a point of diminishing returns for a particular technology. I'm usually amazed by what I see from developers and gadget makers. Heck, even the carriers come up with something interesting every now and again. But this year's Super Bowl reminded me that as much as the big brands wished it were not true, there really are limits to the amount of distractions that our central nervous system can manage.

By halftime, I had given up, plugged my phone into the wall and returned to the party feeling lighter and more able to enjoy myself. Later when a GoDaddy ad or some other such commercial came, a QR code displayed in the bottom left-hand corner, I was glad to be able to just sit back and enjoy the cheese dip.

I could be completely off here. According to an InMobi survey of 1101 iOS and Android, nearly 40 percent of respondents used mobile devices in response to TV ads during the game.

InMobi claims the survey “confirms that consumers significantly utilized their mobile devices during the biggest advertising event of the year.” However, I’d like to point out one key point. Apparently twice as many respondents used their mobile devices during the first half of the game compared to the second half. So I’m not the only one who threw up his hands in the despair at half time, and not because of the score.

Perhaps the only true gauge of how this year’s mobile engagement plans went will be found in the extent to which advertisers increase or curtail their campaigns next year.