The annual Super Bowl advertising frenzy reached new heights this year, with advertisers plunking down $6.5 million to reach viewers for 30 seconds—$1 million more than for last year’s game and nearly three times as much as 20 years ago. Not for nothing: Even though it was the lowest-rated Super Bowl in 53 years, the Rams-Bengals game still figures to be the most-watched television event of the year, because the game is every year. As such, the Super Bowl has become advertising’s premier event, with companies delivering their strongest, most creative and engaging pitches.
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Each batch of Super Bowl ads brings media reviews. But I prefer data over pundits’ subjective takes, so The Harris Poll created the Brand Bowl Index to quantify the commercials’ impacts on overall brand equity and its four components: momentum (whether consumers perceive a brand as gaining or losing market share), consideration (how likely a consumer is to purchase the brand’s products), quality and familiarity. No surprise: 83% of viewers deemed the ads to be an essential part of the Super Bowl viewing experience. The overall winner was WeatherTech, whose ad showing a special ops-like team deploying vehicle protection gear spurred an eight-point bounce in the company’s brand equity, edging out Disney+ and its goat-filled entry.