Rocket Mortgage's 'Barbie Dreamhouse' spot wins the USA Today Ad Meter

The Rams won their second Super Bowl last night on the gridiron, and on the TV screen, Rocket Mortgage clinched its second consecutive victory as its humorous commercial once again topped the USA Today Ad Meter. The lender’s 60-second spot, crafted by Chicago 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. It won with an average score of 6.82 out of 10. It’s the second year in a row that a Rocket Mortgage spot won the Ad Meter’s coveted top spot. In 2021, its “Certain Is Better” campaign starring Tracy Morgan, which appeared as two 60-second commercials, placed both first and second on the USA Today-run chart, which is now in its 34th iteration. At the opposite end of the spectrum this year is Coinbase, whose 60-second commercial—which was little more than a colorful QR code bouncing around a black screen à la an old-school DVD logo—was ranked dead last among the 66 commercials tracked by this year’s Ad Meter. Created by Accenture Interactive, its average score was 3.8. Check out Ad Age’s picks for the best and worst 2022 Super Bowl commercials. Super Bowl LVI also marks the third consecutive year that Highdive has been behind the survey-winning spot. In addition to producing the comical Rocket Mortgage ads that won the last two years, the award-winning agency also created Jeep’s “Groundhog Day” commercial with Bill Murray, which secured an Ad Meter win following the 2020 Super Bowl. More Ad Age Super Bowl coverage Watch all the Super Bowl 2022 commercials The best and worst Super Bowl ads, reviewed See all of Ad Age's 2022 Super Bowl news and analysis Not far behind Rocket Mortgage this year was Amazon’s “Mind Reader” commercial starring a psychic Alexa device, Scarlett Johansson and Colin Jost, coming in No. 2 on the Ad Meter with an average score of 6.78. That was closely followed by a spot from Frito-Lay promoting both Doritos and Cheetos Flamin’ Hot, which cast Megan Thee Stallion and Charlie Puth as animated jungle critters; it scored a 6.73 on the scale. Rounding out the top five most well-received commercials were two automakers: Kia, a long-time Super Bowl advertiser which returned to the game after sitting out in 2021, took home fourth place with an ad from David & Goliath, while Toyota secured the fifth-place spot with its heartwarming “Brothers” ad from Saatchi & Saatchi. On the whole, though, this year’s Ad Meter scores are lower than usual, suggesting that either the quality of Super Bowl ads is on the decline or viewers are getting more cynical. While this year’s highest score was a 6.82, the Ad Meter-winning ads from the past five years all scored above a 7 out of 10. Coinbase's last-place performance—which came as many ad industry pundits applauded the spot—may not come as a huge surprise as audiences, especially those who contribute their opinions to the Ad Meter, traditionally give higher scores to funny commercials and lower scores to those that “push the envelope,” so to speak. In 2019, for example, Burger King’s “Eat Like Andy” commercial, which was actually just 45 seconds of archival footage showing artist Andy Warhol eating a Whopper, ranked last on that year’s Ad Meter with an average score of 3.6. However, the viewer preferences demonstrated by the Ad Meter’s final tally do not necessarily mean a Super Bowl commercial was a success or failure; in fact, it seems to be quite the opposite in Coinbase’s case. The ad drove so many people to the crypto platform that its website briefly crashed, not to mention the thousands of organic tweets it spawned immediately after airing—including a handful of parodies by other brands.

Rocket Mortgage's 'Barbie Dreamhouse' spot wins the USA Today Ad Meter

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