The sun has set on another year of NFL chaos, with the San Francisco 49ers falling 25-22 to the Kansas City Chiefs in overtime.
The Super Bowl is always a huge affair, and this year was no different, with massive celebrity endorsements, unprecedented advertising price tags and ratings that blew previous years out of the water.
B&T has you covered with all the advertising highlights from yesterday’s big game!
Who’s Advertising What?
B&T took a deep dive into all the ads shared during the Super Bowl yesterday; we found a few prominent industries standing out from the crowd. The most advertised industries during the Super Bowl 2024 were TV/Film and Food/Drinks, each accounting for around 20% of all ads. Automotive, Beauty, Real Estate and Retail industries all came in second, accounting for around 7% of all ads.
Samba TV identified CBS, Temu, Universal Pictures and Paramount + among the top brands from the game.
Despite concerns surrounding the advertising of gambling and alcohol during sporting events, B&T found that these categories were among the least represented during yesterday’s game.
What worked?
According to Samba TV, The Poppi ad was the most-watched ad of the Super Bowl, reaching 29.1 million households. “Poppi took home the title of top ad this year for Super Bowl viewers and the quarter of Americans who tuned in just for the ads this year. The ad not only captured buzz, but it won the Super Bowl ads race,” said Ashwin Navin, co-founder and CEO of Samba TV.
This was closely followed by the Verizon ad, which reached around 29 million viewers.
Early data from System1 puts the VML and Mindshare’s Hellmann’s Mayo Cat and Panay Films’ T-Mobile ads as the current front runners for the public’s favourite – and therefore more effective – campaigns.
The success of these campaigns comes as no real surprise to many, given the extravagant nature of both ads and the presence of high-value celebrity endorsements.
“Like in previous years, many advertisers are going big with humour and using recurring characters, celebrities, cultural references and even a combination of all three vehicles to bring the laughs,” said Jon Evans, chief customer officer at System1. “Hellmann’s ‘talking’ cat is unexpected yet fun… and T-Mobile brings back their singing spokespeople with a new celebrity guest. The entertainment stakes are high, so it’s great to see marketers dialling into what works for long-term brand building”.
Ratings Winner
The Super Bowl is always a massive affair, and this year was no different, with 2024 delivering the highest viewership in the last six years. 39.0M U.S. households tuned into the 2024 Super Bowl, up 6% from the 2023 Super Bowl.
In Australia, the Super Bowl was the most-watched program yesterday, reaching an audience of 2,547,000 on Channel Seven alone.
The Taylor Swift Effect
We couldn’t possibly write an article about the Super Bowl without talking about the real MVP of the Chiefs side – Taylor Swift. Swift sped from her concert in Tokyo and arrived at Allegiant Stadium with a team of famous friends in tow. The 14-time Grammy winner and supportive girlfriend of Chiefs Tight End Travis Kelce garnered a total of 55 seconds of airtime, according to Admeter. Based on the price of a 30-second spot, this equates to around 12 million dollars worth of air time.
Many experts have associated the increase in viewership this year with the so-called “Swift Effect”. A recent Seton Hall Sports Poll revealed that 41 per cent of those between 18 and 34 indicated that someone in their household would be watching the event.
Swift also delivered a massive win to Australia prior to touching down in Melbourne later this week to kickstart her Era’s Tour. Swift wore a $650 crochet corset top at the event from Australian designer Dion Lee. This kind of celebrity endorsement is a marketing opportunity money can’t buy and will surely be a massive success for Lee.
If you missed an ad, check out B&T’s summary of all the significant ads from yesterday’s game.
