While some may have found it a bit creepy, E-Trade's Super Bowl spot with a baby adopting an adult voice to comment on financial matters proved most popular among TiVo viewers. However, in the grand
tradition of day-after debate over which spots had the most heat, other research showed that the E-Trade ad fared well, but didn't top the charts.
In the TiVo listing of
highest-rated spots, ads with celebrities sprinkled the top 10, with a Pepsi spot with Justin Timberlake at number two, followed by a Coke ad with political consultant James Carville and ex-Senator
Bill Frist coming in at number four. A Carmen Electra-starring spot for Ice Breakers was at five. And Shaquille O'Neal's starring turn for Vitamin Water came in at number eight. TiVo compiles its
data from second-by-second ratings, the most granular viewership metric in the industry. However, it comes from just the pool of TiVo homes, and some consider TiVo users to be more upscale and
tech-savvy than the population at-large.
advertisement
advertisement
A user-generated spot for Doritos featuring the chips and a mouse trap came in at third in those ratings. Anheuser-Busch, which had three in the TiVo top
10 last year, placed only one this time with an ad featuring cavemen for Bud Light at number seven.
Todd Juenger, the head of audience research at TiVo, said the "game was a dream come true for
advertisers, with the close score keeping fans glued to the television set even more than normal--(and) we can confirm that the advertising spots held the audience's attention as much as the action on
the field."
The high-rated spot with the talking baby was the first of two using the character that E-Trade ran in the game, and it looked to cause some viewer distaste as the baby regurgitated
at the end. The spot didn't fare as well in one of the other rankings of most popular Super Bowl spots that surfaced Monday, ranking sixth in "interest" level in data compiled by New Jersey firm HCD
Research. The research was derived from a panel of 2,400 who all used a response system that gauged their engagement levels in half-second intervals. One caveat: those results were not based on
reactions to all Super Bowl spots--only 20 leading ones that emerged from a screening by a panel of ad industry pundits.
But in the rankings of "sustained" interest levels, a FedEx ad featuring
unsuccessful carrier pigeons came in first, followed by a spot for Bridgestone tires with squirrels (which was the sixth-highest-rated among TiVo users). Another Coke spot, with Macy's parade balloons
chasing a flying Coke bottle, came in third--followed by an ad for Diet Pepsi Max plugging its ability to rejuvenate people with ginseng and caffeine. A Budweiser spot with Clydesdales training in
"Rocky" fashion was fifth.