Reddit 5 Second Ad

Super Bowl LV Ads Lose Attention, Media Costs Rise

With a global pandemic and a divisive political climate, Super Bowl LV was an unprecedented year for advertisers to show off their creative chops on one of the grandest advertising stages. Realeyes continued its tradition of tracking human response to these highly anticipated video advertising creatives.


Super Bowl LV Highlights

Average Realeyes Attention Quality Score of ads in Super Bowl LV was 4.3 out of a possible 10, down from 5.5 in 2018. After 3 years of decline, the Quality Score of ads is trending near bottom.

Super Bowl LV Ads - Chart 1 - Creative Performance

The Creative Efficiency of all Super Bowl ads measured was 36%, meaning that the average creative asset applied against 1,000 impressions is estimated to have yielded 360 quality exposures. That means that a reach goal of 1,000 quality exposures would have required 3,160 impressions.

Super Bowl LV Ads - Chart 2 - Creative Efficiency

At $5.6 million per average 30-second spot, $2.0 million of media was invested
efficiently on average while $3.6 million was wasted. The most efficient creative was Reddit’s "Reddit -5s" ad, at 86%, while the lowest was Chipotle's "Can A Burrito Change The World," at 19%.

Super-Bowl LV Chart Media Spend

The top performing ad, with a Quality Score of 9, was “Team Anthony Anderson vs. Team Mama T-Mobile Big Game 2021 Commercial.” Perhaps most notable was Reddit’s 5-second ad with a Quality Score of 7. The remaining top performing 6 ads had a Quality Score of 7:

  Brand Creative Seconds   Quality Score Capture Retain Encode                
01 T-Mobile Family Drama 60   9 6.5 93 95.3                
02 Amazon Prime Coming to America II 30   7 5.3
65
81.8

               
03 H&R Block File Virtually 30   7 5.0 65 71.3                
04 Inspiration4 Join The First All-Civilian Space Mission

30   7 5.5 80

65.5

               
05 NFL As One 60   7 5.2 78 61.2                
06 Nintendo Switch Awkwafina plays... Mario Kart 8 Deluxe 30   7 5.0 71 86.0                
07 Rocket Mortgage Certain is Better 60   7 5.0 65 91.6                
08 Reddit 5-Second Ad 5   7 5.0 53 60.6                



The 8 high performing ads, with Quality Scores between 7-10, stood out because of their strength in drawing emotional response and attentiveness. Encoding is predictive of brand memorability and likability. High performers represented only 12% of the 66 ads tested in Super Bowl 2021.