Captions on ads are a tremendously helpful but often overlooked accessibility feature, with many marketers simply relying on YouTube’s automatic transcription feature to do all the work. But Jeep’s newest ad from agency Highdive shows that you can integrate captions in a way that makes a fun ad even more fun. The ad, “2022: Earth…
Liquid Death may have lost its $50,000 bet on the Cincinnati Bengals, but the renegade canned water company saw a big payoff from its regional commercial filled with hard-partying children. The controversial spot–which aired in 23 major markets including New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Philadelphia and Dallas–used a cover of the Judas Priest classic “Breaking…
Twitter and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences teamed up on several initiatives for the 94th Academy Awards, which will be presented at the Dolby Theater in Los Angeles March 27. The Academy will host a series of exclusive weekly Twitter Spaces where fans can discuss nominees, debate which title is worthy of…
Former Chief Marketing Officer Jennifer Sey said she had been seen as the company’s next CEO.
Snap Inc. began testing a new monetization option for Snap Stars, enabling them to place mid-roll ads in their public Stories. Creators must apply for the Snap Star designation, which the company described on a support page as “public figures or creators who bring some of the best and most entertaining content to Snapchat,” and…
Victoria’s Secret filed trademarks to sell virtual goods as it joins the growing list of metaverse-focused brands.
To put it simply: Highdive has figured the Super Bowl out. The 70-person independent agency based in Chicago has strung together a comically long line of beloved Super Bowl ads. In 2020, it created the USA Today Ad Meter’s top and fifth ranked ads for Jeep and Rocket Mortgage, respectively. Last year, it nailed down…
The comic actresses are in final talks for the job, which the producer Will Packer is adding back to the ceremony. The event had been hostless for the past three years.
I’m Ad Age Editor Jeanine Poggi, taking one last look at all of the Super Bowl LVI commercials. Now that the game is over we can get to the real game—the analysis of the ads.
That’s how Ad Age staffers Judann Pollack and Simon Dumenco described this year’s crop of Super Bowl commercials in our annual review. Whether it was the Crypto Bowl thanks to the onslaught of cryptocurrency brands in this year’s game, the celebrity bowl due to the abundance of A-list talent appearing in ads, or the EV Bowl with automakers promoting their electric vehicle ambitions, one thing our two esteemed reviewers did seem to agree on was the commercial game was at least slightly more fun than last year.
Kia, Uber Eats and General Motors’ Chevy commercials were among the top performers, according to Ad Age, while Turkish Airlines, WeatherTech and Irish Spring missed the mark.
Check out Ad Age’s review of all the Super Bowl commercials here.
Rocket Mortgage was once again the big winner of the night, according to USA Today’s Ad Meter. The lender’s 60-second ad, crafted by Chicago-based agency Highdive, stars Anna Kendrick in what initially appears to be an ad for Barbie’s Dreamhouse dollhouse—until characters like “Cash Offer Carl” and “Betty Offer Betty” swoop in to start a bidding war on the miniature property, spoofing the country’s current red-hot housing market, Ad Age’s Ethan Jakob Craft wrote. It won with an average score of 6.82 out of 10. Not only was this Rocket Mortgage’s second consecutive year topping the Ad Meter, but it was Highdive’s third straight win. Aside from its Rocket Mortgage win last year, it also won for Jeep’s 2020 commercial.
Frito-Lay’s Cheetos/Doritos commercial was ranked as the most likable according to Ace Metrix. That list also includes Nissan’s “Thrill Driver” ad, Lay’s commercial starring Paul Rudd and Seth Rogen and BMW’s spot featuring Arnold Schwarzenneger as Zeus.
At the opposite end of the spectrum is Coinbase, which came in dead last in USA Today’s Ad Meter. But while the 60-second ad, which was little more than a QR code bouncing around the screen (resembling a retro arcade game), was ranked last among the 66 commercials tracked by Ad Meter, it certainly received plenty of buzz.
According to Coinbase Chief Marketing Officer Kate Rouch, the company saw 20 million hits to its landing page in one minute.
And while viewers are clearly split on the ad, it does open the door to new ways for brands to think about Super Bowl advertising as more than just an awareness play, but as an opportunity to drive KPIs.
While this is surely not the first time QR codes have appeared in Super Bowl commercials, it is the first time they’ve generated this much buzz. Aside from Coinbase’s QR code, eagle eyed-viewers may have noticed a QR code in Rocket Mortgage’s Super Bowl spot, Ad Age’s Adrianne Pasquarelli writes. Midway through the commercial, which uses Anna Kendrick and Barbie to advertise Rocket Homes, one of the children is shown sporting a t-shirt with a QR code. The code is for StockX, the resale platform co-founded by Dan Gilbert, who is also founder and chairman of Detroit-based Rocket Mortgage.
The code leads to a StockX website that reads, “Well look who it is. Congrats on seeing our cameo in the Rocket Homes and Rocket Mortgage big game commercial. Now you have access to enter an exclusive ReStockX.”
Catch up on all of the Super Bowl news here.
On Twitter, multiple brands including Planters and TurboTax spoofed Coinbase’s QR codes with posts of their own. And of course, both in-game advertisers and those that didn’t run ads this year were eager to discuss the ad game on social channels. One of the best tweets of the night actually came from the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, which in response to Uber Eats’ commercial said, “Do not eat soap.”
The winners of Twitter’s brand bowl (as measured by Twitter), include FanDuel, which did not run a Big Game spot, for its Bingo stunt. Pepsi was named Twitter’s MVP for its halftime promotions, including an NFT giveaway.
TVision, a firm that measures TV attention, said that those ages 55 and up paid the most attention to the Super Bowl commercials, as measured by its Attention Index.
It’s fitting then that advertisers seemed to have catered to that audience, with the AARP noting many ads targeted the 50-plus demo. “50+ took Super Bowl 56 by storm,” ??Mark Bradbury, senior director, insights and integrated Marketing, AARP Media Solutions said in a statement. “For nearly four hours, audiences were treated to a steady parade of people aged 50+ on their screens – from commentators, athletes, halftime performers, celeb spectators and star-studded ad cameos. When big bucks were on the line, the network and mainstream advertisers made clear this demographic is more important than ever.”
This is important because brands have long focused much of their marketing dollars on the 18-49 demographic. And when it comes to TV, at least, the bulk of the viewership in live, linear TV, comes from the 50-plus age group.
Ad Age staffers dissect the biggest takeaways from advertising’s biggest night.
You can revisit all of the ads or check out the ones you missed right here.
And for a full look at all the marketers that aired national spots in Super Bowl LVI, check out our Super Bowl ad chart.
Meta revealed last September that it had been underreporting iOS web conversions by approximately 15% due to the privacy changes Apple implemented in its operating system. Director of product marketing, ads Goksu Nebol-Perlman said in a blog post Monday that the company roughly halved its underreporting, to about 8%. The company noted that it arrives…
Instagram allows users to create Guides containing recommended products, places and Instagram posts. Users have the option to save unfinished Guides as drafts and continue working on them later on. If you’ve saved a Guide as a draft but you later decide you no longer want to share the Guide, our guide will show you…
The year is 2020, and it seems like every other advertisement during the Super Bowl highlighted an upcoming blockbuster, sure to be a smash hit. Whether it was F9, Black Widow, No Time to Die or A Quiet Place Part II, the Big Game was ripe with spots from major studios. Flash forward to 2022,…
Instagram now offers a Security Checkup feature that gives users recommended steps to take in order to ensure that their account is as secure as it can be. For instance, the Security Checkup feature will allow users to check the two-factor authentication status for their account. Users may want to periodically use the Security Checkup…
36 million U.S. households, or more than 1 in 4 U.S. homes, tuned into the Super Bowl this year, which is a 12% increase from last year’s game. And among those viewers who paid more attention to the commercial breaks than the game itself, there were a few apparent marketing themes at play. To name…
Meta’s social media ad platform said it refined how it measures campaigns after working through a few bugs.
Few new technologies have generated as much buzz in recent years as nonfungible tokens, or NFTs. As with social networks, virtual reality and cryptocurrency when they first hit the scene, the excitement surrounding these unique digital assets has led many to question whether they will live up to the hype. But NFTs are not a…
Frito-Lay, Nissan and BMW are among the marketers that won over consumers.
Plane journeys often spark small, unexpectedly romantic moments between couples because of one particular condition – the absence of the constant distraction of the smartphone once airplane mode is switched on.
It’s this insight which is behind ITA Airways’ Love is in the Airplane Mode Valentine’s Day campaign, which suggests couples spend the day together with their mobiles offline, as if they were in flight.
In the film, we see couples find time to laugh about the little moment together, make plans, and enjoy simple intimacies like resting a head on their partner’s shoulder. Airplane Mode becomes a space where they can live in an atmosphere of togetherness and understanding. ‘Love is in the Airplane Mode’ coincides with the launch of a Valentine’s Day promotion, which people can only access when they put their device in Airplane Mode.
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