• by Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, February 2, 2015

In a rare second-by-second analysis of the Super Bowl’s audience, Rentrak has released its Ad Retention Index for the Big Game showing that the audience for advertising was virtually equal to the audience for the on-field action through the entire game.

Rentrak’s data, which is drawn from digital set-top tuning, likely was not the currency NBC used for any of the ads it sold during Sunday night’s game, but Rentrak’s analysis shows that audience levels rose throughout the game, right up to the final seconds of play.

“The most-watched ads of the game were from Wix and Victoria’s Secret, which each ran at 9:51 p.m. EST before the game’s final drive,” according to Rentrak. “Wix had a 110 index and Victoria Secret’s had a 109 index compared to the average rating of the entire game.”