• by Sarah Mahoney  @mahoney_sarah, February 12, 2024

Some numbers don’t lie. The Kansas City Chiefs definitely won the Super Bowl. And it was the longest ever, and only the second time the Big Game has gone into overtime play. The event set new viewership records, with Nielsen reporting that 123.4 million people watched across all platforms, well above last year’s 115.1 million viewers*.

But declaring which ads “won” the evening, as always, depends on who’s measuring what. USA Today’s Ad Meter places Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny DeVito’s State Farm in the No. 1 spot. Next comes Dunkin Donut’s hilarious “The DunKings,” bringing Ben Affleck, Matt Damon and Tom Brady together as a dismal pop act. And Kia’s heartwarming young figure skater scores a “Perfect 10” for its EV9, ranking third.

Uber Eats, the NFL’s “Born to Play” and Dove’s “Hard Knocks” also did well.

At iSpot, which ranks ads by likeability, preliminary rankings show Christopher Walken ran away with the game in his spot for BMW. The “Kung Fu Panda 4” ad came next, followed by Volkswagen’s “An American Love Story.”

“Doritos: Dina and Mita” and Toyota’s “Dareful Handle” also landed in the Top Five.

Over at the Kellogg School’s Super Bowl Advertising Review, Google won with “Javier in Frame” spot, showing how visually impaired people can use the camera on the Pixel phone.

That Northwestern University panel, which has used an academic framework to rate the ads for the last 20 years, also loved Dove’s ad to support young girls in sports and CeraVe’s clever use of actor Michael Cera.

“They did a nice job using the celebrity source in a way that focused on product and the benefit,” Derek Rucker, the Sandy & Morton Goldman Professor of Entrepreneurial Studies in Marketing, tells Marketing Daily.  “It was good fun, but well directed at the brand.”

By Kellogg’s metrics, ads for Homes.com, Squarespace and Temu fumbled.

EDO, a TV outcomes company, ranked the ad spots by the incremental online activity they sparked, leading to a dramatically different winners list. By that measure, the Disney ad for the upcoming “Deadpool & Wolverine” movie ranked highest, followed by an ad for the forthcoming “Wicked;” Volkswagen’s “An American Love Story,” Poppi soda and Temu’s “Billionaire.”

Temu is also likely the game’s highest roller, and its appearance on both the winners' and losers' lists will have marketers looking more closely at its strategy. The shopping app’s ad was seen five times, with three in-game appearances and two post-game spots, as well as $15 million in coupons and other giveaways, according to MediaRadar.

So whose ads stunk up the 74-minute game, which was not just the longest Super Bowl, but the seventh longest NFL game ever?

According to Ad Meter, Starry’s Love Triangle; Turbo Tax, Snapchat, and Robert Kennedy Jr.’s campaign ad all fared poorly.

And Ad Meter fans didn’t think much of the “He Gets Us” ads promoting Jesus.

Kellogg’s panel also panned the campaign, giving it a D.

“My sense is a lot of people were left wondering what the point of the ad was,” Rucker says. “And that’s not a place you often want to leave the audience.”

*Preliminary viewership numbers have been updated.