The Long Game: How Super Bowl Ads Compare to Christmas Creative
Without a doubt, the Super Bowl is a time for brands and agencies to bring their biggest and boldest ideas forward. From surprising celebrity cameos to never-before-seen stunts to humorous narratives, there’s always something new and thrilling to see. While many fans tune in to see the gameday matchup and the halftime show, consumers get equally excited about the ad breaks.
Landing at the top of the ‘favorite Super Bowl ads’ list is a major accomplishment. But marketers know that success goes beyond this accolade. Seeing a strong return on marketing investment is also key. Big Game creative must offer long-term commercial benefits, especially when millions are on the line. Does the pressure marketers and creative teams face around the Super Bowl yield effectiveness diamonds?
We took a deeper dive into System1’s Test Your Ad Premium database, opening the creative lens a bit wider, to see whether Super Bowl ads win the brand-building game. Is there an underdog challenger that delivers greater emotional engagement among consumers?
Let’s take a look at the leaderboard…
Gameday Ad Stats
Every year, ad spend for the Big Game reaches new heights with both returning and debut advertisers booking a coveted slot. And every year we test all the Super Bowl ads with real consumers using our Test Your Ad platform. Their emotional responses to the creative – happy, surprised, sad, even neutrality – enable us to accurately predict the short- and long-term impact of the work.
As a result, we now have 5 years of Super Bowl rankings. There are some clear standouts in our testing with consumers, from Jeep’s Groundhog Day-themed commercial in 2020 to Huggies’ “Welcome to the World” a year later, Doritos’ Salt-N-Pepa spot in 2022 to Disney’s 100-year celebration in 2023. And of course, we can’t forget 2024’s #1 ad in our rankings: Michelob bringing together futbol & football with help from Lionel Messi.
Crunching the numbers puts the spotlight on Super Bowl ad effectiveness. The average US ad scores 2.3-Stars on our 5-Star scale, predicting modest brand-building potential. The average for Super Bowl ads has ranged from 2.6 to 2.9 over the last 5 years, making them only slightly more impactful than the average ad.
There are of course some bright spots. Compared to 5 years ago, there are more 3- and 4-Star ads and there’s been a decline in 1- and 2-Star ads, though 2024 still saw more 1-Star ads than 2021 and 2022. Super Bowl ads face the same struggle that other ads do – breaking into ‘exceptional’ 5-Star territory. Only about 1% of ads achieve 5-Stars and only a handful of Super Bowl advertisers have done so.
Creative Competition
This past holiday season was one for the advertising history books – we witnessed (and tested!) a record number of holiday ads throughout November and December. It was a mix of narrative-driven, showmanship work that excelled at brand-building and more promotional, salesmanship work that focused on limited-time deals and product features.
In 2024, US holiday season ads performed well above the average, hitting 3.6-Stars. An impressive feat, helped by a record 17 ads hitting 5-Stars. Christmas ads dominate in the UK market with an average of 4.3-Stars in 2024, but the US is gaining ground. 2024 also marked a major milestone for holiday season ads. It was the fifth consecutive year that US holiday ads outperformed Super Bowl ads.
You may chalk it up to the holiday season being an especially emotional and nostalgic time of the year. There’s a feeling surplus and many advertisers expertly lean into it. But other trends emerge when we look closer at Christmas vs. the Super Bowl.
For one, fewer brands rely on celebrity star power during the holidays. Just 2 of our top 10 holiday ads featured celebrity spokespeople (Capital One with John Travolta and Twinkly with Chevy Chase). We see more brands leveraging character, incident and place and their distinctive assets. The focus is more on recurring fluent devices like the M&M’s spokescandies, Pillsbury’s Doughboy, the Energizer Bunny and Target’s Bullseye, and less on famous faces. For more on celebrities and fluent devices in Super Bowl ads, see our two-part blog series here and here.
Christmas also benefits from re-airings that wear in with consumers and consistently score well. This includes Hershey’s iconic “Bells” and M&M’s classic ad featuring the spokescandies coming face to face with Santa. On the other hand, the Super Bowl advertising landscape is built around novelty and surprise. In fact, about half of advertisers refrain from teasing their creative early. Instead, they prefer to leave consumers guessing until the gameday ad breaks are underway. We even see ads from brands that don’t publicly confirm they’ll be running a Super Bowl ad – the ultimate surprise!
So while there are nuances to each major advertising moment, there is also a big question that advertisers must answer. How can Super Bowl advertising elicit as much feeling as Christmas ads? Preferably intense, positive emotions to drive both short-term sales uplift and long-term profit gain and market share growth.
Create with Confidence
Breaking through the Super Bowl noise is essential. With so much invested in the ideation, production and promotion of Super Bowl creative, advertisers want to score a brand-building touchdown. And of course there’s the glory of being consumers’ favorite ad of the night and perhaps even making it onto the list of the ‘best Super Bowl ads of all time’ – VW’s ‘The Force’, the initial E*Trade baby commercials, Budweiser’s Clydesdales and plenty of others can still be recalled by consumers years later.
System1’s pre-testing can predict how audiences will feel about creative and the commercial impact of the work. And we can provide insights to further improve creative. When you’re on the biggest advertising stage of the year, making the most of the attention is crucial.
To learn more about how Test Your Ad can support your Super Bowl ad, contact us here.
And access more Super Bowl insights in our comprehensive report, “How to Win the Super Bowl.” It’s based on 6 years of Super Bowl ad testing and analysis, with tips that can be used for the Big Game and beyond to drive your brand forward.
