Oscars Ads Quantified is the second report, after the Super Bowl, in Annalect’s ongoing analysis designed to evaluate and index the creative effectiveness of sponsored content during live television events. According to TV Guide’s Michael Schneider, "the Big 4 networks are up 6 percent in total viewers versus last year when seven days of DVR use was factored in." However, with live events such as The Oscars, which attracted about 7 percent more viewers this year than last year’s show, advertisers get to take advantage of the opportunity to reach a large audience in real-time versus waiting seven days for viewers to catch up with content that may no longer be relevant.
In this report, Annalect selected a set of nationally broadcast ads that aired during the 2014 Academy Awards telecast and tracked them by click statistics using bit.ly. The number of Facebook and Twitter shares, and the way in which each commercial was shared across different social media networks have been included in the analysis to reveal the full digital life of each commercial. All commercials were crowd-sourced to collect individual Ad Score and Brand Score for each, providing a context for how viewers perceived the commercial and if/how it influenced their opinion about the brand.
CONNECTION BETWEEN SOCIAL VIRALITY AND AD/BRAND ATTRIBUTES:
When we looked at the top 10 most viewed TV commercials based upon YouTube hits (see below), we found commonalities in the attributes amongst these top socially ranked commercials. Clarity (“ad was easy to understand” and “brand was easily identifiable”) is the most important aspect of these commercials, regarding both the message and the brand. In addition to clarity, cool and emotional factors come into play with specific attributes such as “the brand seemed cool”, “ad was worth sharing”, “ad was funny”, and “gave me a good feeling about the brand”; all of these attributes were the highest rated ad elements.
TOP 10 COMMERCIALS BASED ON YOUTUBE VIEWS:
Apple (Your Verse): 1,411,685 views
Lipton (Muppets): 139,425 views
Cadillac (CTS – Moon): 125,542 views
Snickers (Godzilla): 123,864 views
Acura (Let The Race Begin): 74,377 views
Mercedes (S Class 2014): 60,797 views
Hotels.com (Captain Obvious): 28,285 views
Dior (J’adore): 25,968 views
Sprint (Family Plan Band): 25,656 views
Cadillac (CTS Garage): 14,773 views
ULTIMATELY, WHAT MAKES AN AD OR A BRAND SUCCESSFUL DURING THE OSCARS?
- The ad attributes that matter the most are: “easy to understand”, “ad was funny”, “liked the actor(s)”
- The brand attributes that matter the most are: “brand was easily identifiable”, “brand seemed cool”, “gave me a good feeling about the brand”
For a deeper dive into the analytics, click on the image below and explore the data yourself.
