Automakers Scored in Super Bowl Ads
By Karl Brauer February 10, 2011
The final results are in, and the winners of Super Bowl XLV were Chevrolet and Volkswagen, with Chrysler earning a very honorable mention. That's according to television ratings authority Nielsen, which today reported a record-setting 119,628,000 viewers of the Chevrolet Camaro ad. Right behind the Camaro ad was another Chevrolet commercial, the Chevrolet Cruze spot, which was seen by 119,333,000 viewers. Both of these Chevrolet ads beat the previous record held by a Doritos commercial from 2010 (with 116,231,000 viewers).
In fact, four of the top five commercials were automotive, with Chrysler and Bridgestone Tires each scoring 117,565,000 viewers, just behind the NFL ad that garnered 118,155,000 viewers. Another automaker, Volkswagen, grabbed two slots in Nielsen's Top 10 "Best Liked" ranking of Super Bowl ads, with "Little Darth Vader" winning the number 1 spot and "New Beetle Navigates the Wild" getting number six. Chrysler's 200 ad, a two-minute commercial featuring Eminem, landed at number eight, with Audi's "Break Out of Old Luxury" ad rounding out the list at number 10.
It's worth noting that while automakers featured prominently in the "Most Viewed" and "Best Liked" lists, they didn't earn a single slot on Nielsen's Top 10 "Most Recalled" ads (the Doritos "Pug Knocks Down Door" commercial won that ranking). At $3 million dollars for a 30-second slot - and here's hoping Chrysler got some kind of volume discount on its 2-minute ad - I'm betting several automotive executives were disappointed with the low recall scores on their commercials.
Conspicuously absent from the Nielsen lists were ads from BMW, Hyundai, Kia and Mercedes-Benz, though Edmunds.com's own traffic analysis confirms these ads did impact Super Bowl viewers with varying levels of increased page view activity.
This suggests a larger, more critical question for today's automakers. Simply put, when producing a Super Bowl commercial, should the ad departments concern themselves with general viewing results, like the ones reported by Nielsen, or specific automotive results, like the ones we can now track at car-buying sites?
I'd suggest that while the former makes for great headlines and water-cooler discussions, the later represents a better justification for multi-million dollar ad budgets. By the way, I somehow missed the Camaro ad during the Super Bowl but figured I should watch it as part of the research for this story. Definitely better than any Doritos commercial.
Source: The Nielsen Company (nielsen.com)
The Recall score is the percentage of viewers who can Recall the brand of an ad they were exposed to during the normal course of viewing the Super Bowl. These scores are then indexed against the average score for all Super Bowl ads (Recall Index). 100 equals average. For example, with a Recall Index of 179, the Doritos "Pug" ad was 79% better-recalled than the average Super Bowl spot.
The Likeability score is the percentage of viewers who report to like "a lot" an ad they were exposed to during the normal course of viewing the Super Bowl, among those recalling the brand of the ad. These scores are then indexed against the average score for all Super Bowl ads (Likeability Index). 100 equals average. For example, with a Likeability Index of 186, the Volkswagen "Darth Vader" ad was almost twice as liked compared to the average Super Bowl spot.
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