AI reveals emotional impact of all 50 Super Bowl ads

Mountain Dew, Avocados From Mexico and Rocket Mortgage were the top Super Bowl ads in terms of emotional impact, according to new research.

Using webcams and the latest in computer vision and machine learning technologies, Realeyes measures the attention and emotion of opt-in audiences as they watch video content online. Realeyes’ content intelligence enables brands, agencies and media companies to inform and measure their content, predict performance, and maximize return on media investment.

Realeyes ranked the Super Bowl ads according to attention, emotional impact and predicted View Through Rate.

Based on aggregate measurement from an opt-in panel audience (n=2,500) using webcams and anonymous facial coding, the Realeyes’ “Interest” score is an index that combines attention and emotion signals to build a second-by-second indication of a viewer’s distraction, attention and attentive engagement of video advertising content. Higher scores indicate that viewers showed greater interest, attention and engagement as measured by their facial cues.

This year’s top commercial spots, according Realeyes’ Interest score:

Mountain Dew Zero Sugar, As Good As The Original (92)
The Avocados from Mexico Shopping Network Avocados From Mexico 2020 Ad 60 (86)
Rocket Mortgage – Momoa at Home (85)
P&G Presents When We Come Together, an Interactive Super Bowl Party, America’s Choice (84)
Pepsi – Zero Sugar – Done Right (84)

View all 5 here:

“At $5.6 million per 30-second commercial spot, the advertising creatives that command the greatest attention ultimately maximize the delivery of messaging,” said Max Kalehoff, Realeyes’ vice president of marketing. “Facial coding and attention measurement unlock the ability for marketers to embed human response into advertising, ensuring brand content makes paid media work harder.”

Realeyes measures attention as a key metric to accurately predict view-through rates (VTR) of video content before ads go live. Accurate VTR prediction scores enable advertisers to select the best content to maximize return on media investment. Greater view-through rates result in greater effective reach and impact as the content is distributed across different media channels and ad formats.

This year 12 Super Bowl spots scored higher than the Interest norm of 73 within Realeyes’ historical database of nearly 500 Super Bowl ads.

“Advertisers this year pursued a diversity of approaches to earn attention, such as playing to positive and negative emotions, and last-minute agile strategies,” said Kalehoff. “However, noticeably absent this year was a dominant undertone of broader social movements more evident during past big games, like Black Lives Matter and #metoo. It is possible marketers were subdued in their messaging in light of an approaching election season and growing awareness of a national divide.”

The ads that drove the highest average percent of “Happy” emotion throughout their duration were:

Mountain Dew – Zero Sugar, As Good As The Original (21.4%)
Doritos – The Cool Ranch feat. Lil Nas X and Sam Elliott (20.9%)
Tide – Finally Later – Super Bowl 2020 (18.3%)
Cheetos – Can’t Touch This SUPER BOWL LIV (17.5%)
P&G – When We Come Together, an Interactive Super Bowl Party, America’s Choice (17.0%)

View all 5 below:

The ads that drove the highest average percent of “Negative” emotion throughout their duration were:

Hint Water – Super Bowl Commercial (2020) – Pie Eating Contest (18.1%)
Amazon Prime Video – Hunters (14.3%)
Donald Trump – Criminal Reform Ad – Super Bowl 2020 (13.1%)
Soda Stream – SodaStream Discovers Water On Mars Fresh Sparkling Water in Seconds (13.0%)
Lightlife TV – Surprise Yourself (12.5%)

View all 5 below:

View the rankings of all 50 Super Bowl ads here: