A number of different organizations have put their spin on evaluating the success or failure of Super Bowl ads. At LBi Atlanta, we’ve added our own spin on this analysis. Instead of focusing on which ads viewers considered their favourites or the raw number of social media mentions, we have looked at an index that compares the volume of conversation on the day after the Super Bowl to the average daily volume of conversation in the six months prior to game day. We’re going to continue to analyze the results seven days, 30 days after the game.
The thinking behind our approach is:
- We want to look at the lasting impact these ads have on conversation volume. After all, if the ad is truly effective, it will inspire conversation beyond centered around the brand that may have been sparked by the ad but are no longer about the ad itself
- Amongst the Superbowl advertisers (and I bet amongst companies in general) Google already dominates social conversation so of course their ad will spark the most conversation too. (In our 6 month baseline leading up to the game, it had over 6 times as many mentions as the next most talked about brand, Intel.)
- The ads we love the most aren’t always the most effective. Some of the most beautiful creative doesn’t have any impact on consumer behaviour at all and vise-versa. We wanted to see what works; not what was most entertaining.
You can follow our analysis and our thinking around the Super Bowl here: http://bit.ly/auODbz
We’ll be updating it frequently as we develop more insight so keep checking back, subscribe, follow us on twitter or follow me on twitter
