Super Bowl LV Ads Lose Attention, Media Costs Rise
Max Kalehoff
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.
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.
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%.
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 | 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.
Check out full report
Check out Realeyes’ full Super Bowl LV Ads Report, loaded with insights into creative and media performance.
