Yesterday’s Super Bowl match between the Seattle Seahawks and eleventh-hour victors the New England Patriots was watched by a record 114.4 million Americans according to broadcaster NBC.

Interestingly, 118.5 million turned into watch Katy Perry’s half-time performance. The result was 2.2 million up on 2014’s game, the previous holder of ‘the most watched’ title.

OzTam’s preliminary ratings for yesterday’s Australian audience was 280,000 metro viewers, an increase of 70,000 on last year.

When it came to the ads, Budweiser’s Clydesdale/puppy combo appeared to be the audience’s favourite, scoring most online hits and most of the online activity about the Super Bowl spots.

Arguably the most talked about ad from yesterday was ‘Make Safe Happen’ – a child protection commercial that featured the narration of a dead child. As daring as it was, social media lit up, primarily for having such a ‘down’ message during the nations’ biggest sporting event. The ad was mentioned 238,000 times on social media and 64 per cent of the comments were negative.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKUy-tfrIHY