Superbowl-ads.com Article Archive

He spit up in front of 97.4 million people and “underestimated the creepiness” of a clown he hired, but the 9-month-old in E-Trade’s (ETFC) two Super Bowl ads is a star. Both ads aired late in the game, but ranked 13th and 14th out of 53 game ads with consumers rating the ads in real time for USA TODAY’s annual Super Bowl Ad Meter. Since then, they’ve been two of the most-watched game ads online and finished high in measures of online buzz.

How they made the ads: The crew at agency Grey New York filmed the baby (his name is not being disclosed) sitting in a highchair before a green screen making expressions, mostly in response to his mother. She sat in an adjacent room for the filming and was seen by the baby on a monitor. Added later digitally: the mouth movements of a 5-year-old actor, the voice of a 30-year-old and the keyboard, room items and clown.

Hitwise, announced the Super Bowl XLII advertiser websites with the largest increases in market share of visits on Super Bowl Sunday (Feb. 3, 2008) were Hyundai (www.hyundaigenesis.com), up 1450 percent versus Saturday, Feb. 2, 2008, Paramount’s Ironman Movie (www.ironmanmovie.com), up 800 percent and GoDaddy.com, which increased 616 percent.

The highest rated commercial in Sunday’s down-to-the-wire Super Bowl battle was an ad for Victoria’s Secret, according to Nielsen analysis released today.

The spot was seen by 103.7 million people at 9:44 p.m., near the dramatic conclusion to the game, which aired on Fox. (Viewing numbers provided are based on live plus same day DVR playback viewing.) The average audience throughout the game was a record-setting 97.5 million people in the U.S.

comScore (NASDAQ: SCOR), a leader in measuring the digital world, today released the results of its annual Super Bowl post-game survey. The survey of 1,139 U.S. Internet users who watched Super Bowl XLII, which featured the New York Giants’ improbable victory over the previously undefeated New England Patriots, was conducted on February 3-4, 2008. With two large market teams and the Patriots’ quest for a perfect season on the line, the television broadcast averaged a record 97 million viewers throughout the game, making the event even more important than usual for this year’s advertisers.

Anheuser-Busch Reigns as King of Ads

The most popular advertiser during the Super Bowl was Anheuser-Busch, whose commercials for Bud and Bud Light (including comedian Will Ferrell’s offbeat spot) scored well amongst viewers, with nearly half indicating they would most like to see the commercials again. Beverage spots were particularly popular this year, with a large percentage of respondents saying they would also like to see ads for Pepsi (28 percent) and Coca Cola (25 percent) again.

The days of Super Bowl ads littered with celebrities may be numbered. Celebs of various sorts showed up in 18 ads this year, but not one cracked the top five in USA TODAY’s Ad Meter, an exclusive real-time consumer rating of the ads.

Shut out of even the top 10: Pepsi’s (PEP) high-priced Justin Timberlake, Carmen Electra for Ice Breakers, Shaquille O’Neal for Vitaminwater and Richard Simmons and Alice Cooper for Bridgestone. In the game’s celeb heyday of the 1980s, Michael Jackson could make a Pepsi ad an event, and Michael Jordan took ads into rare air. On the latest Super Sunday, some celeb ads even crashed.

et ready for more Jackie Moon pitches for Bud Light.

The improvisational endorsement from Will Ferrell’s character in New Line Cinema’s release of Semi Pro initially was intended to be an online short. But Anheuser-Busch executives decided to put the ad from DDB, New York and Chicago, on Fox’s Super Bowl telecast during the fourth quarter.

“We agreed with Will’s team a couple weeks ago and ourselves that it would be better for the Super Bowl because it’s an opportunity for a few more jokes; it was a great call,” said Bob Lachky, chief creative officer and evp, global industry development.

Giant carrier pigeons terrorize a towering skyscraper. Justin Timberlake is thrown onto the street and dragged into traffic. One beer drinker torches a romantic dinner with his flame-throwing breather and another gets sucked into a jet engine.

What did the creators of this year’s Super Bowl commercials know about the fate that awaited the New England Patriots in Sunday’s Super Bowl?

Mayhem and destruction were overriding themes in the commercial barrage that was interrupted by long stretches of the Patriots spinning their wheels during the New York Giants’ 17-14 upset victory, tripping up New England’s quest for a 19-0 season at the final leg. Perfection is never the goal of these ads. Far from it. Shock value remains a popular objective, but try as these ads did, nothing plugging liquid refreshment, cars, tires or websites approached the edge-of-the-seat surprise that accompanied Eli Manning’s late touchdown pass to Plaxico Burress.

This was the eighth Super Bowl of the 21st century, but if you were only paying attention to the commercials, you might have thought it was the 1970s, ’80s or ’90s.

It wasn’t just older themes that played during the between-plays breaks in Super Bowl XLII, such as Budweiser’s Dalmatians and Clydesdales, which have been commercial stars during the big game for decades. Sunday’s Super Bowl ads also referred to Michael Jackson’s “Thriller,” the Andrea True disco song “More, More, More” and the “Saturday Night Live” skit that led to the 1998 movie “A Night at the Roxbury.” And that was just in the first half.

Something is wrong here. TiVo grabs data from how many times the pause and rewind buttons are pressed during the Super Bowl and makes the most frequently shifted ads the “top ten” ads.

If you watched the game, though, you’ll agree with me that there’s no way the Dorito’s “Mouse Trap” or the Ice Breakers “Carmen Electra” spot should be anywhere close to the top ten ads. I can, however, see people rewinding each of the aforementioned ads and saying, “What the hell was that? Someone spent $3 million on THAT? Rewind it again, I can’t tell what the hell just happened.”

FedEx, “Pigeons”: After a first quarter that was filled with lame or underwhelming spots, this was the first to draw big laughs from my Bowl-viewing contingent. Doritos, “Mouse Trap”: I’m not 100 percent sure why, but my tiny focus group went wild for this one. When people are yelling for you to pause the game [...]

TiVo published again the top Super Bowl Commercials based on when TiVo subscribers hit the pause and replay button.

E-Trade’s Baby won the top Super Bowl Ad crown this year according to TiVo users. Justin Timberlake for Pepsi took second place and the Doritos spot featuring a mouse trap took third. The USA Today Ad meter has the Budweiser ad with the Rocky Horse as top Super Bowl ad.

The hype. The title. The glory. It all came down to one game. This year, it was the battle between the “un-beatens” and the underdogs. In one of the biggest upsets in NFL history, the Giants outplayed the Patriots 17-14 in Super Bowl XLII. Whether you are a Patriots or Giants fan, viewers could find common ground in one aspect of the big game: the commercials.

Super Bowl commercials have always provided entertainment and an avenue of humor for viewers. Companies spent an average of $2.7 million for a 30 second spot, according to The Associated Press.

Advertisers couldn’t have asked for much more out of the Super Bowl XLII on Sunday.

A nail-biting 17-14 victory by the New York Giants over the New England Patriots likely kept most of the audience glued to the television — and the commercials — until the final seconds.

And while the drama may have been higher on the field than during the breaks, the advertisements nevertheless provided a cast of characters that included supermodels, a sleazy jock, a inspirational horse and a cheeky daytrader in diapers.

This year, the Super Bowl took on even more significance than usual for advertisers, as they tried to push beer, soda, sneakers and cars to consumers stymied by an economic downturn.

The New York Giants’ victory over the New England Patriots Sunday night was one of the biggest upsets in Super Bowl history, but the advertising effort during the big game was not quite as inspiring.

“We had a mixed bag of commercials this year. Some were really strong and some hard to follow,” said Tim Calkins, a clinical professor of marketing at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management.

Super Bowl commercials are supposed to be the best. The very best!

Every year, we expect miracles — and every year, to be honest, many of them disappoint. This year is no different, though the culprit might surprise you – that vast new advertising frontier we call “the Internet.” Yes, the great equalizer has leveled the playing field; now bad is the new good.