Do Super Bowl ads work?

The Super Bowl is the big event for Madison Avenue. It's the most expensive time to buy TV ads ($2.5m for a 30 second spot) and the whole industry look at who runs what.

Despite the big question mark over whether TV works as well as it once did, it was still the main event this week - the most popular Google search including the words super bowl over the last 4 weeks was Super Bowl ads.

But do they work? The WSJ looked at web traffic and found some people had done very well compared to the previous Monday - and some had done badly.

                                                    In another attempt to learn just what works Tivo released their viewing figures

                                                                         And the Guardian reports that brain-scanning showed that the Disney ad did best;

                                            As ever what works, depends on what you're trying to do. But to us the key purpose of any ad has to be to try and start a dialogue - and few of the ads we've seen made any attempt. So not the way we would spend $2.5m.

Comments

[Daria]

I think it is great such attemps are being done. It gives us valuable knowledge about human’s brain and its reactions to advertising, however I do believe there is need to compile fMRI data with other traditional quantified data. I am very enthusiastic about neuromarketing but we need more integrated multi-source data before we draw any conclucions.

[Simon Andrews]

I agree Daria - it's just another tool. But the more knowledge we have the better - and its more evidence that the industry needs to embrace data and learning to deliver more effective marketing.