Our favorite time of year is back - the 2024 Super Bowl ad season is here! Every year, we test key ads from the Super Bowl in the USA and analyse them to see what we can learn. Here are some early insights from this year!
This years event had the highest viewership ever, with 123.7 million viewers tuning in – a 7.4% increase on last year! How much of this can be attributed to the close game? Or was it predominantly the Swift Effect? While the Kansas City Chiefs won the game, it looks like the networks and advertisers were also winners this year.
Given that the advertisers were paying $USD7 million per 30s spot, and this was the same cost as 2023, the brands were getting more bank for their buck.
So with greater media efficiency, were the ads also effective? Which ideas resonated US consumers.
This years’ ads were squarely focused on the use of humour and celebrities. The light-hearted approach that is intended to ‘tickle the funny bone’ and make people feel good is a tried and tested approach for the big game.
One of the most talked about was Super Bowl first time advertiser, skincare CeraVe.
In this ad we saw Michael Cera making us believe he was a skin care visionary. This is storytelling started quietly with social pranks and culminated in a compelling Super Bowl ad that was focused on a younger Gen Z audience with a full 360 campaign.
This was one of many ads which showed celebrities being used in a self-deprecating way. This year the super stars were willing to mock themselves in the name of humour and entertainment, and it seemed to really work for consumers.
One of the most popular was Ben Affleck’s band the DunKings. As a sequel to Dunkin Donuts’ successful 2023 campaign, this ad starring Affleck, JLo, Matt Damon and Tom Brady really leveraged celebrities in a funny and relevant way. This ad definitely attracts attention and leaves people feeling positive about the brand.
Comedy and celebrities were also the focus of one of the most liked ads from State Farm Insurance. Arnold Schwarzenegger did a great job of making fun of his accent. Most of the ad was released before the game, but the surprise twist ending with Danny DeVito built a sense of nostalgia for viewers.
And there was a lot of love for the UberEats spot which received a lot of media attention before the game due to the well-known stars laughing at themselves. The use of popular culture references of Friends and also the Beckham’s documentary helped this ad to be relevant and appealing.
For the second year in a row, there were fewer purely emotive, tear-jerker style or purpose based ads. This could be related to the complicated political and economical environment, or perhaps it is a sign that these style ads are not working for brands.
There were really only two brands, Dove and Google that talked to some other community benefits this year.
Dove partnered with Nike to talk about healthy body image and encouraging girls to stay in Sport. It used the famous track from Annie the Musical to engage and create positive feelings.
Google Pixel heroed the new Guided Frame feature that helps people with low vision to take high-quality images thanks to a mix of AI and voice prompting. It cleverly gave viewers a look at the world as someone with impaired vision sees it and generated some strong emotional responses.
Super Bowl is usually all about car ads and this year was no exception, although there were fewer of them. The focus of the auto ads is on sustainability with almost all brands emphasising their electric vehicles. Kia is a great example of this with a focus on their premium car the EV9.
While there were some of the tried and tested brands at the big game this year, like Kia, Toyota, Doritos and Budweiser, there were also a lot of first time advertisers like Lindt, Drumstick, e.l.f., Kawasaki.
There were two new brands that really spent big on their media with multiple spots. Home.com had 4 ads, and online Chinese retailer TEMU had 5.
Clearly both brands were using this monolithic TV event to build awareness for their brands, but also by association with an event like this, some legitimacy.
It would have been a relief for them to hear that this years event had the biggest reach ever….media touchdown! Have we whet your appetite? We have so many more ads + insights we could share. The Luma Team have put together a full insights deck from this years Super Bowl. Please reach out to the Luma team to get your hands on it!
Sources:
Nielsen 2024, "https://www.nielsen.com/news-center/2024/super-bowl-lviii-draws-123-7-million-average-viewers-largest-tv-audience-on-record/"
Statista 2024, “Average cost of a 30-second Super Bowl TV commercial in the United States from 2002 to 2024”
Christopher Alvarenga / Unsplash Images for the cover image