The Seattle Seahawks’ epic beat down of my beloved Denver Broncos turned the Super Bowl into a Super Dud for many who were not among the millions of No. 12-waving maniacs…and Seahawks owner Paul Allen, who reportedly broke out some “big licks” during the raucous post-game party.
For everyone without a rooting or betting interest...there were the commercials.
And consumers apparently kept their eyes glued to them even as the game rapidly got out of hand.
According to TiVo’s second-by-second analysis of anonymous data pulled from a panel of about 30,000 TiVo users (a figure that includes those that use retail and MSO-supplied TiVo devices), half of the top 10 most popular spots (meaning they were actually viewed at “play” speed or replayed), occurred at halftime or later:
1. Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee (Halftime)
2. Budweiser’s “Puppy Love” (Q1)
3. GoDaddy’s “Bodybuilder” (Q4)
4. Doritos’s “Cowboy Kid” (Q4)
5. Toyota Highlander’s “Terry Crews & the Muppets” (Q2)
6. Doritos’s “Time Machine” (Q1)
7. RadioShack’s “The Phone Call” (Q1)
8. Dannon Oikos Greek Yogurt’s “The Spill” (Q4)
9. Bud Light’s “Up for Whatever #2” (Q1)
10. Squarespace’s “A Better Web Awaits” (Q1)
The Doritos marketing team knows how to get its groove on during the big game, as a spot from the chipmaker ranked in the TiVo top five for an eighth-consecutive year, according to the company.
TiVo’s Super Bowl ad analysis, a subset of its larger 350,000-box panel that allows for an overnight examination of usage data, offers a unique view for advertisers and networks to see which commercials are getting skipped or re-watched, explained Tara Maitra, TiVo’s SVP and GM of content and media sales and SVP of human resources (he also oversees the TiVo Research and Analytics unit).
And this year’s breakdown only amplified the fact that many consumers watch the Super Bowl for the super ads, and yet another "indication that viewers stuck around," even as the game turned uglier, she said.
And there was some cross-over appeal with the Hulu audience, which voted for their favorites during the game at the Hulu AdZone, a hub that featured all of the commercials appearing during the game. Super Bowl spots from Budweiser, RadioShack and Dannon also scored big on Hulu’s top ten:
2. Coca-Cola: “It’s Beautiful”
3. Budweiser: “A Hero’s Welcome”
5. Toyota: Big Game Ad Starring Terry Crews and the Muppets
6. RadioShack: “The Phone Call”
8. Chevy: “Romance”
9. 2015 Hyundai Genesis: “Dad's Sixth Sense”
10. Dannon Okios: “Spill”
And viewer eyes were also fixed on tablets and smartphones during the game. According to Shazam, maker of an app that syncs up content with live TV using audio content recognition tech, the Super Bowl was “Shazamed” more than 700,000 times, more than doubling last year’s total. More than half of those occurred during the Bruno Mars halftime show, the company said.
The top Shazamed ads during the game were:
- Chevrolet, “Life”
- Jaguar, “Rendezvous”
- Bud Light – Cool Twist
- Bank of America featuring U2
- Budweiser – A Hero’s Welcome
Unfortunately for me all of these big numbers don’t change the lopsided score of 43-8. Now, please excuse me while I go crawl back into my hole.
