• by Jack Loechner , Staff Writer @mp_research, March 1, 2003

Wait ‘Til Next Year: SuperBowlemia

Though the Super Bowl is over, it would appear from a new study by Ipsos-ASI, as reported by David Brandt, that advertisers got their money’s worth! While most of the research and polling around Super Bowl advertising is focused on which ads viewers liked or were well produced, this study examined whether Super Bowl ads work better than ads in other major football games and were more memorable to consumers.

The research is about the Super Bowl as an advertising medium, so the study compared the effectiveness of the ads around each (selected) game to determine whether the Super Bowl is a more-or-less effective venue than a college or professional championship game. The results were based on interviews comparing advertisement recall among men watching the Super Bowl with advertisement recall among men who watched the AFC Conference title game or a college football bowl game (the Fiesta Bowl or the Rose Bowl).

Some 37% of the respondents said they had watched all of the ads aired in any given quarter of the Super Bowl, compared with just 4% for the Rose Bowl, 13% for the Fiesta Bowl, and 7% for the AFC Championship game.

The most "popular" ads were not necessarily the most effective. For example, Reebok advertisements won critical and popular acclaim, but did not rank high on the list of ads male Super Bowl viewers recalled. Neither did advance hype necessarily improve recall. Some 39% of viewers said they had heard something about a specific Super Bowl ad before the telecast. But this hype-exposed group was actually less likely than average to remember any advertisements.

Research highlights:

• 87% could remember the name of at least one of the advertisers in the Super Bowl, while only 33% could remember an advertiser from the Rose Bowl game, 53% from the Fiesta Bowl, and 54% from the AFC Championship game.
• The average viewer could remember 3.5 advertisers in the Super Bowl, compared to only about one advertiser for the college and AFC Championship games.
• 48% said they had watched all the ads during the Super Bowl halftime show. Only 14% watched all the ads during halftime of the Rose Bowl, 21% during the Fiesta Bowl, and 16% for the AFC Championship game.
• Budweiser and Pepsi fared best during the Super Bowl. 66% of the audience remembered advertising for Budweiser, and 44% remembered ads for Pepsi.

	Watched All Ads	Avg Ads Remembered	Could Name One Ad
Rose Bowl	4%	.85	33%
Fiesta Bowl	13	1.21	53
AFC	7	1.26	54
Super Bowl	37	3.52	87

You can find out more here.