Advertisers that ponied up for a $7 million spot in Super Bowl LVIII had to have been thrilled with the record-breaking 123 million attentive viewers that tuned into the game. While the word is still out on the average ROI those advertisers achieved, we at Sharethrough wanted to analyze the creatives for any prevailing trends that advertisers can use to improve the attention and ROI of future commercials - whether or not they run in the Super Bowl.
How Sharethrough Analyzed Every Super Bowl Commercial
Our team at Sharethrough analyzed 63 official Super Bowl ads from the 2024 broadcast and categorized them based on a number of factors including sentiment (humor, inspiration, nostalgia), if they featured a celebrity, how viewers scored them in USA Today’s Ad Meter ratings, brand vertical, and more. With the help of AI, we analyzed the results, which revealed some interesting trends on what factors were most likely to lead to a higher viewer rating and how the 2024 ads compared to previous years. It is worth noting that we excluded trailers, network promos, NFL ads, political ads and local ads.
Top Trends from Super Bowl LVIII Commercials
Celebrities Featured More than Ever
While Taylor Swift’s 11 camera appearances only added to numerous other celebrity shots throughout the game, they also dominated the commercial breaks. In fact, 68% of 2024 Super Bowl commercials included at least one celebrity and 58% of those included one or more celebrities. This is significantly higher than the 2023 Super Bowl when over 40% of commercials included a celebrity (according to iSpot data reported in the WSJ), which was a sixfold increase from 2010. But do more celebrities lead to higher viewer ratings? More on that later.
CPG Dominates While Financial Services Plummets
The 2022 Super Bowl was dominated by cryptocurrencies (hello Coinbase QR Code) and other financial services. That trend continued to die faster than crypto bankruptcies, as tried-and-true CPG brands led the way in 2024 with, by far, the highest share of ads (excluding repeat ads…looking at you Temu) at 29%, followed by automotive, retail and tech which each made up 8%.
Of the 18 CPG creatives, food brands like Super Bowl veterans Doritos and first-timers like Drumstick had the most ads with 6, followed by 5 beverage brands including 2 new sodas Poppi and Starry, 4 candy brands and 3 beauty brands.
Humor Without the Violence
Not surprisingly, according to a recent Ad Age-Harris Poll 69% viewers prefer humorous Super Bowl ads to serious ads. This year did not disappoint with 70% of commercials leading with humor.
However, a promising trend reversal is emerging. Slate reported in 2014 about a Wright State study which revealed that Super Bowl ads with violent humor jumped from 13.6% in 1989 to 73.4% in 2009. We decided to conduct our own analysis of which humorous ads from 2024 used violence and are happy to report that the share has markedly decreased, falling below the 1989 figures to a mere 9%.
And that’s if you consider Sir Patrick Stewart tossing Hey Arnold's football-shaped head over a mountain for Paramount+ violent.
Do Celebrities and Humor Lead to Higher Rated Ads?
So we’ve established that the 2024 Super Bowl was dominated by celebrities and humorous ads. The question now is if viewers like those types of ads more or not. To figure this out, we cross-referenced our analysis with USAToday’s Ad Meter, a ranking based on feedback from over 160,000 Super Bowl viewers.
Even just eye-balling the top 10 rated ads reveals that viewers preferred the celebrity-heavy creatives. State Farm’s “Like a Good Neighbaaa” featuring Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny DeVito scored the highest consumer ranking; followed closely by Ben Affleck, Jennifer Lopez, Matt Damon, Tom Brady and more in Dunkin’s “The DunKings;” and Jennifer Aniston, David Schwimmer, David and Victoria Beckham in 4th with Uber Eats. Not only did 7 of the top 10 ads feature celebrities, but all of those except one featured more than one celebrity. However, Kia, Dove and Google Pixel 8 all proved that you can crack the top 10 with a celebrity-free inspirational ad that tugs at the heartstrings.
Taking a more scientific approach, we analyzed the top-rated ads that scored above the median to see if the same trend continued.
When In Doubt, Hire More Celebrities
From a celebrity standpoint, 76% of the top-rated ads featured at least one, which is an 11% increase from the 68% average. But it appears that the more celebrities you can fit in an ad (and your budget), the higher likelihood your ad will perform well - considering 55% of the top rated ads had more than 1 celebrity, which is a 39% increase compared to the 40% average.
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Bring the Funny
Top-rated ads were also slightly more likely to be funny at 76% versus the average of 70%. The same is true for funny ads with at least one celebrity which were about 9% more likely to occur with top-rated ads. But before you run and tell your creative agency to only create funny ads, it is worth noting that 4 of the top 10 rated ads did not use humor: Kia, Dove, Budweiser and Google Pixel 8.
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The analysis of Super Bowl LVIII commercials highlighted key trends: a significant presence of celebrities, dominance of CPG brands, and a preference for humor without violence. For Super Bowl advertisers, the findings suggest leveraging celebrity appearances effectively and focusing on humor to engage audiences, while also considering the evolving landscape of viewer preferences. While these findings can be helpful to non-Super Bowl advertisers, it’s worth remembering that earning attention outside of the Super Bowl is much more difficult. We recommend reading our other research on Understanding Consumer Behaviors During Commercial Breaks and our whitepaper on Research-Backed Ways to Improve Attention & Outcomes.
Advertisers that ponied up for a $7 million spot in Super Bowl LVIII had to have been thrilled with the record-breaking 123 million attentive viewers that tuned into the game. While the word is still out on the average ROI those advertisers achieved, we at Sharethrough wanted to analyze the creatives for any prevailing trends that advertisers can use to improve the attention and ROI of future commercials - whether or not they run in the Super Bowl.
How Sharethrough Analyzed Every Super Bowl Commercial
Our team at Sharethrough analyzed 63 official Super Bowl ads from the 2024 broadcast and categorized them based on a number of factors including sentiment (humor, inspiration, nostalgia), if they featured a celebrity, how viewers scored them in USA Today’s Ad Meter ratings, brand vertical, and more. With the help of AI, we analyzed the results, which revealed some interesting trends on what factors were most likely to lead to a higher viewer rating and how the 2024 ads compared to previous years. It is worth noting that we excluded trailers, network promos, NFL ads, political ads and local ads.
Top Trends from Super Bowl LVIII Commercials
Celebrities Featured More than Ever
While Taylor Swift’s 11 camera appearances only added to numerous other celebrity shots throughout the game, they also dominated the commercial breaks. In fact, 68% of 2024 Super Bowl commercials included at least one celebrity and 58% of those included one or more celebrities. This is significantly higher than the 2023 Super Bowl when over 40% of commercials included a celebrity (according to iSpot data reported in the WSJ), which was a sixfold increase from 2010. But do more celebrities lead to higher viewer ratings? More on that later.
CPG Dominates While Financial Services Plummets
The 2022 Super Bowl was dominated by cryptocurrencies (hello Coinbase QR Code) and other financial services. That trend continued to die faster than crypto bankruptcies, as tried-and-true CPG brands led the way in 2024 with, by far, the highest share of ads (excluding repeat ads…looking at you Temu) at 29%, followed by automotive, retail and tech which each made up 8%.
Of the 18 CPG creatives, food brands like Super Bowl veterans Doritos and first-timers like Drumstick had the most ads with 6, followed by 5 beverage brands including 2 new sodas Poppi and Starry, 4 candy brands and 3 beauty brands.
Humor Without the Violence
Not surprisingly, according to a recent Ad Age-Harris Poll 69% viewers prefer humorous Super Bowl ads to serious ads. This year did not disappoint with 70% of commercials leading with humor.
However, a promising trend reversal is emerging. Slate reported in 2014 about a Wright State study which revealed that Super Bowl ads with violent humor jumped from 13.6% in 1989 to 73.4% in 2009. We decided to conduct our own analysis of which humorous ads from 2024 used violence and are happy to report that the share has markedly decreased, falling below the 1989 figures to a mere 9%.
And that’s if you consider Sir Patrick Stewart tossing Hey Arnold's football-shaped head over a mountain for Paramount+ violent.
Do Celebrities and Humor Lead to Higher Rated Ads?
So we’ve established that the 2024 Super Bowl was dominated by celebrities and humorous ads. The question now is if viewers like those types of ads more or not. To figure this out, we cross-referenced our analysis with USAToday’s Ad Meter, a ranking based on feedback from over 160,000 Super Bowl viewers.
Even just eye-balling the top 10 rated ads reveals that viewers preferred the celebrity-heavy creatives. State Farm’s “Like a Good Neighbaaa” featuring Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny DeVito scored the highest consumer ranking; followed closely by Ben Affleck, Jennifer Lopez, Matt Damon, Tom Brady and more in Dunkin’s “The DunKings;” and Jennifer Aniston, David Schwimmer, David and Victoria Beckham in 4th with Uber Eats. Not only did 7 of the top 10 ads feature celebrities, but all of those except one featured more than one celebrity. However, Kia, Dove and Google Pixel 8 all proved that you can crack the top 10 with a celebrity-free inspirational ad that tugs at the heartstrings.
Taking a more scientific approach, we analyzed the top-rated ads that scored above the median to see if the same trend continued.
When In Doubt, Hire More Celebrities
From a celebrity standpoint, 76% of the top-rated ads featured at least one, which is an 11% increase from the 68% average. But it appears that the more celebrities you can fit in an ad (and your budget), the higher likelihood your ad will perform well - considering 55% of the top rated ads had more than 1 celebrity, which is a 39% increase compared to the 40% average.
Bring the Funny
Top-rated ads were also slightly more likely to be funny at 76% versus the average of 70%. The same is true for funny ads with at least one celebrity which were about 9% more likely to occur with top-rated ads. But before you run and tell your creative agency to only create funny ads, it is worth noting that 4 of the top 10 rated ads did not use humor: Kia, Dove, Budweiser and Google Pixel 8.
The analysis of Super Bowl LVIII commercials highlighted key trends: a significant presence of celebrities, dominance of CPG brands, and a preference for humor without violence. For Super Bowl advertisers, the findings suggest leveraging celebrity appearances effectively and focusing on humor to engage audiences, while also considering the evolving landscape of viewer preferences. While these findings can be helpful to non-Super Bowl advertisers, it’s worth remembering that earning attention outside of the Super Bowl is much more difficult. We recommend reading our other research on Understanding Consumer Behaviors During Commercial Breaks and our whitepaper on Research-Backed Ways to Improve Attention & Outcomes.
Behind Headlines: 180 Seconds in Ad Tech is a short 3-minute podcast exploring the news in the digital advertising industry. Ad tech is a fast-growing industry with many updates happening daily. As it can be hard for most to keep up with the latest news, the Sharethrough team wanted to create an audio series compiling notable mentions each week.
Advertisers that ponied up for a $7 million spot in Super Bowl LVIII had to have been thrilled with the record-breaking 123 million attentive viewers that tuned into the game. While the word is still out on the average ROI those advertisers achieved, we at Sharethrough wanted to analyze the creatives for any prevailing trends that advertisers can use to improve the attention and ROI of future commercials - whether or not they run in the Super Bowl.
How Sharethrough Analyzed Every Super Bowl Commercial
Our team at Sharethrough analyzed 63 official Super Bowl ads from the 2024 broadcast and categorized them based on a number of factors including sentiment (humor, inspiration, nostalgia), if they featured a celebrity, how viewers scored them in USA Today’s Ad Meter ratings, brand vertical, and more. With the help of AI, we analyzed the results, which revealed some interesting trends on what factors were most likely to lead to a higher viewer rating and how the 2024 ads compared to previous years. It is worth noting that we excluded trailers, network promos, NFL ads, political ads and local ads.
Top Trends from Super Bowl LVIII Commercials
Celebrities Featured More than Ever
While Taylor Swift’s 11 camera appearances only added to numerous other celebrity shots throughout the game, they also dominated the commercial breaks. In fact, 68% of 2024 Super Bowl commercials included at least one celebrity and 58% of those included one or more celebrities. This is significantly higher than the 2023 Super Bowl when over 40% of commercials included a celebrity (according to iSpot data reported in the WSJ), which was a sixfold increase from 2010. But do more celebrities lead to higher viewer ratings? More on that later.
CPG Dominates While Financial Services Plummets
The 2022 Super Bowl was dominated by cryptocurrencies (hello Coinbase QR Code) and other financial services. That trend continued to die faster than crypto bankruptcies, as tried-and-true CPG brands led the way in 2024 with, by far, the highest share of ads (excluding repeat ads…looking at you Temu) at 29%, followed by automotive, retail and tech which each made up 8%.
Of the 18 CPG creatives, food brands like Super Bowl veterans Doritos and first-timers like Drumstick had the most ads with 6, followed by 5 beverage brands including 2 new sodas Poppi and Starry, 4 candy brands and 3 beauty brands.
Humor Without the Violence
Not surprisingly, according to a recent Ad Age-Harris Poll 69% viewers prefer humorous Super Bowl ads to serious ads. This year did not disappoint with 70% of commercials leading with humor.
However, a promising trend reversal is emerging. Slate reported in 2014 about a Wright State study which revealed that Super Bowl ads with violent humor jumped from 13.6% in 1989 to 73.4% in 2009. We decided to conduct our own analysis of which humorous ads from 2024 used violence and are happy to report that the share has markedly decreased, falling below the 1989 figures to a mere 9%.
And that’s if you consider Sir Patrick Stewart tossing Hey Arnold's football-shaped head over a mountain for Paramount+ violent.
Do Celebrities and Humor Lead to Higher Rated Ads?
So we’ve established that the 2024 Super Bowl was dominated by celebrities and humorous ads. The question now is if viewers like those types of ads more or not. To figure this out, we cross-referenced our analysis with USAToday’s Ad Meter, a ranking based on feedback from over 160,000 Super Bowl viewers.
Even just eye-balling the top 10 rated ads reveals that viewers preferred the celebrity-heavy creatives. State Farm’s “Like a Good Neighbaaa” featuring Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny DeVito scored the highest consumer ranking; followed closely by Ben Affleck, Jennifer Lopez, Matt Damon, Tom Brady and more in Dunkin’s “The DunKings;” and Jennifer Aniston, David Schwimmer, David and Victoria Beckham in 4th with Uber Eats. Not only did 7 of the top 10 ads feature celebrities, but all of those except one featured more than one celebrity. However, Kia, Dove and Google Pixel 8 all proved that you can crack the top 10 with a celebrity-free inspirational ad that tugs at the heartstrings.
Taking a more scientific approach, we analyzed the top-rated ads that scored above the median to see if the same trend continued.
When In Doubt, Hire More Celebrities
From a celebrity standpoint, 76% of the top-rated ads featured at least one, which is an 11% increase from the 68% average. But it appears that the more celebrities you can fit in an ad (and your budget), the higher likelihood your ad will perform well - considering 55% of the top rated ads had more than 1 celebrity, which is a 39% increase compared to the 40% average.
Bring the Funny
Top-rated ads were also slightly more likely to be funny at 76% versus the average of 70%. The same is true for funny ads with at least one celebrity which were about 9% more likely to occur with top-rated ads. But before you run and tell your creative agency to only create funny ads, it is worth noting that 4 of the top 10 rated ads did not use humor: Kia, Dove, Budweiser and Google Pixel 8.
The analysis of Super Bowl LVIII commercials highlighted key trends: a significant presence of celebrities, dominance of CPG brands, and a preference for humor without violence. For Super Bowl advertisers, the findings suggest leveraging celebrity appearances effectively and focusing on humor to engage audiences, while also considering the evolving landscape of viewer preferences. While these findings can be helpful to non-Super Bowl advertisers, it’s worth remembering that earning attention outside of the Super Bowl is much more difficult. We recommend reading our other research on Understanding Consumer Behaviors During Commercial Breaks and our whitepaper on Research-Backed Ways to Improve Attention & Outcomes.
Founded in 2015, Calibrate is a yearly conference for new engineering managers hosted by seasoned engineering managers. The experience level of the speakers ranges from newcomers all the way through senior engineering leaders with over twenty years of experience in the field. Each speaker is greatly concerned about the craft of engineering management. Organized and hosted by Sharethrough, it was conducted yearly in September, from 2015-2019 in San Francisco, California.
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