Author: Colin Pye

From the very first teaser through to the last ad of the game, each spot released in the field is rated by its performance to Capture, Retain and Encode audience attention using Realeyes PreView.

All eyes are on the Super Bowl. The biggest network TV event of the year claimed 102 million viewers in 2020 at a cost of $5.6 million per 30-seconnd spot. But are advertisers creating ads that engage with viewers and connect with them on an emotional level?

Realeyes set out to understand trends in Super Bowl advertising over the last three years by testing 192 ads that aired during the big game in 2018, 2019, and 2020. All ads were tested with our PreView system, which measures the ability of an ad to capture and retain viewer attention and encode an emotional response.

Super Bowl LV will be occurring in a vastly different environment than previous years. Viewers have been through an emotional roller coaster over the last year with the COVID-19 pandemic and a hotly contested election.

Overall our study found a decline quality and encoding scores over the last three years, which may be indicative of emotional fatigue in an increasingly divided nation. After a rocky January, in 2021all bets are off as to the ability of advertisers to capture viewer attention and connect with them on an emotional level. Stay tuned for our Super Bowl LV Recap after the game.

The competition for consumer attention is fierce leading up to Christmas. It’s crucial to have a campaign that attracts highly distracted audiences, which is why brands spend millions on media space. The pandemic has created a backdrop of caution, along with a host of logistical challenges, but advertiser’s creativity could’t be locked down.

If attention is an outcome that leads to sales and customer loyalty, then the advertising industry should embrace attention.

But measuring attention is not trivial. And that’s why we published our latest report, “The CMO Guide for Measuring and Managing to Attention Outcomes.”