The Super Bowl Ads with the Greatest Sales Potential
Advertising’s biggest night delivered SO many commercials. There was a mix of the classics – like Budweiser, Booking.com, Lay’s and Jeep. But there were also plenty of newcomers, like OpenAI, Liquid Death, Instacart and Häagen-Dazs. And then there were the brands that favor stunts, like the third Kick of Destiny from FanDuel, a super-sized giveaway from first-time advertiser Fetch Rewards and Tubi’s latest spot following its Cannes-winning interruption fake-out.
This probably leaves you wondering who really won. Every year, System1 puts every Super Bowl ad to the test with real consumers to predict which spots will score big brand and business effects. We’ve once again ranked the top Super Bowl commercials according to our Star Rating. Don’t miss those insights here.
But there are two additional core metrics by which we can measure Big Game commercials. Spike Rating and Fluency Rating. In this blog, we’ll be exploring the former and its important role in advertising.
How We Measure Ad Effectiveness
First, a brief timeout to review how we test ads.
Our Test Your Ad platform reveals consumers’ emotional responses throughout an ad, including happiness, surprise, neutrality, sadness, fear, disgust, anger and contempt. In addition to the type of emotion, we also capture the intensity of these emotions and the strength of branding. The combination of the latter two datapoints leads to our Spike Rating. Test Your Ad assigns creative a score of 1.0 to 5.9 Stars. This data predicts an ad’s long-term brand-building potential.
The short-term returns for each Spike bracket is:
1.00 & below = Low
1.00 – 1.09 = Modest
1.10 – 1.18 = Good
1.19 – 1.32 = Strong
1.33 & above = Exceptional
Spike’s Biggest Successes
The average Spike Rating for this year’s Super Bowl ads was 1.21 (predicting ‘Strong’ brand-building potential). This is the same as 2024’s average Spike Rating.
The top 10 leaders on Spike are as follows (note: where brands are equal on Spike, we broke the tie based on the higher emotional intensity score).
1. Reese’s (Erich & Kallman), Don’t Eat Lava – 1.70
2. Doritos (Dylan Bradshaw), Abduction – 1.67
3. Little Caesars (McKinney), Whoa! – 1.66
4. Pringles (FCB New York), The Call of the Mustaches – 1.58
5. Taco Bell (Biite), Celebration of Fans – 1.55
6. Bud Light (Anomaly), Big Men on Cul-de-sac – 1.54
7. Budweiser (FCB New York), First Delivery – 1.65
8. Booking.com (Zulu Alpha Kilo), Get Your Stay Ridiculously Right – 1.49
9. Stella Artois (Artists Equity), David & Dave: The Other David – 1.47
10. Hellmann’s (VML), When Sally Met Hellmann’s – 1.46
Signed, Seal-ed, Delivered
You might be wondering, “but wait, how did that wild Mountain Dew ad perform?!” The PepsiCo-owned brand teamed up with Goodby Silverstein & Partners and director Taika Watiti to create perhaps the buzziest ad leading into Super Bowl Sunday. Reminiscent of Super Bowls commercials of the past, the spot saw Becky G and the Mountain Dude transported to a tropical dream world after opening a Baja Blast soda. There they encounter Seal…as a seal, singing a new rendition of his classic hit. “Kiss from a Lime” is an absolute earworm that will surely be stuck in our heads for days.
Not to worry – the 30-second version Mountain Dew aired during the game scored exceptionally well on Spike, tying Hellmann’s at 1.46. The brand also nailed brand recognition – 96% of viewers correctly identified the brand thanks to a song centered around the drink, bold green branding and the inclusion of fluent device Mountain Dude. And the 60-second version scored the highest of all the Super Bowl ads on Spike.
When your ad has made it to meme status, you know you’ve got a Spike winner on your hands.
How Brands Spiked Interest
So, what does it take to score well on Spike? We noticed a few trends from this year’s ads:
- Bring the laughs. Humor is a gateway to intense emotional reactions of happiness and surprise. Reese’s returned with slapstick humor, urging people not to eat the lava, but to instead eat molten Reese’s. Doritos had an out-of-this-world commercial showing aliens trying to steal a bag of chips. And Bud Light featured an over-the-top cul-de-sac party that got wilder at every turn.
- Use celebrities in stories that suit them. The Super Bowl is the home of celebrity spokespeople. But not every celeb-backed ad delivers. To drive emotional intensity, brands should leverage celebrities in ways that feel authentic. For Little Caesars, that meant recruiting funny man Eugene Levy for an eyebrow-raising spot, as he’s known for his distinct eyebrows. Pringles cast a few well-known mustachio-ed men, including James Harden and Nick Offerman, to tell a tale of flying mustaches. And Häagen-Dazs recruited Fast and Furious stars to do what they do best – drive.
- Create your own characters to root for. Everyone loves seeing brand-owned characters come to life. When characters with agency are a central part of a storyline, are used consistently and have ‘betweenness’ or a sense of connection with others, this helps elicit a strong emotional reaction. For the 2nd year, Nerds had its giant Gummy star alongside a celebrity, Totino’s brought Chazmo the alien back for another ad and Angel Soft debuted in the Super Bowl ad game with a darling angel.
- Don’t make viewers guess who you are. Ads that are strongly branded score well on Spike – don’t forget that Fluency is an important part of the equation! Budweiser managed a perfect Fluency score, crafting a story centered around the Clydesdales, who have made nearly 50 appearances in Super Bowl ads over the years. Red Bull scored 98 for sticking to the same look and feel as it has used for years. Both ads achieved ‘Exceptional’ Spike.
Create with Confidence
System1 helps the world’s biggest advertisers predict and improve the commercial impact of their advertising. Want to hear how Test Your Ad supported Pfizer’s latest Super Bowl spot? Jon Evans, host of the Uncensored CMO podcast, recently sat down with Susan Rienow, CMO of Pfizer, to discuss everything that goes into showing up on advertising’s biggest night. Listen here.
There’s more Super Bowl insights! Our webinar recapped the top ads of the night and why they worked. Click below to access the recording and download our Super Bowl recap report.
