Most Viewed Video Ads: Super Bowl 2022

Hold onto your beer cozies: The Most Viewed Video Ads list for the 2022 Super Bowl has just kicked off.

With overall viewership down in 2021 and the NFL making advertisers sign longer contracts, many wondered what the future held in store for Super Bowl LVI. Luckily, viewership rebounded in 2022 to an estimated 101.1 million (source: ESPN), indicating that advertisers could feel secure in their investments. At a cost of roughly $6.5 million for a 30 second spot (source: CBS Sports), you can bet that advertisers brought their A-game. So kick your feet up, put your phone on silent and get ready to laugh, cry, and cheer along with some of the best that ad land has to offer.

We’re teasing commercials now —that’s a thing?

Seth Rogen and Paul Redd said it best in their 15-second Lay’s teaser to the tenth place ad in our list; teaser ads are definitely a “thing”. They’re short mini-trailers where brands pre-promote what viewers can expect from their game day ads, proving that for many people, the Super Bowl ads are the real show.

Teaser videos also gave brands a chance to get a head start in capturing audience attention. As explained by CSO Seraj Bharwani in his recent Adweek article, creating a reason for viewers to revisit your page on multiple occasions is a great way to build incrementality —a key metric for gauging if “broad-reach awareness advertising is working for your brand.”

Looking on the brighter side of 2022

This year’s Super Bowl ads featured a light-hearted and playful tone, bringing some levity into 2022 and giving people something they could feel good about. Brands like T-Mobile and Turkish Airlines chose to focus on unity and the connectedness of people, while others like Amazon and Rakuten went straight for viewers’ funny bones.

Now let’s hit the field for the Most Viewed Video Ads of Super Bowl LVI.

Most Viewed Video Ads: Super Bowl 2022

Rank	Brand	Campaign	Release date	Total views
1	Amazon	Mind Reader	02/07/2022	105,375,410
2	Nissan	Thrill Driver	02/03/2022	66,464,946
3	T-Mobile	Do It For the Phones	02/11/2022	45,709,402
4	Cheetos	Flamin’ Hot	02/01/2022	37,431,386
5	Crypto.com	Moment of Truth	02/13/2022	36,401,160
6	Turkish Airlines	Pangea	02/10/2022	31,297,573
7	BMW	Zeus & Hera	02/08/2022	28,787,797
8	T-Mobile	Zach Braff and Donald Faison Sing a Duet for Home Internet	02/12/2022	28,308,572
9	Rakuten	High Stakes	02/07/2022	20,858,029
10	Lay’s	Stay Golden	02/13/2022	20,818,814

*Data collected by AcuityAds’ True Reach™ insights platform from February 1 – February 16, 2022

Key Insights

So how do you know if your Super Bowl ads actually work? Here are just some key insights from based on this year’s ads.

When we were young: The power of nostalgia

Our top 10 list included many song references that are at least a decade old, such as Electric Avenue by Eddy Grant in the Zeus and Hera BMW ad. Given that nostalgia marketing is used frequently by Super Bowl advertisers. Song choices like these represent a deliberate attempt to tie positive emotion to a brand. Look no further than the 2022 halftime show for more examples of musical nostalgia.

Closer to the stars: Celebrities steal the show

It’s no secret that people want to see more of their favorite actors, musicians, and comedians. Given that celebrity worship has been increasing over time, it makes perfect sense that brands would choose to recruit a little star power to make their messaging more memorable. Box office superstar Scarlet Johansson, singer and musician Miley Cyrus, funny man Seth Rogan and one-and-only mayor of flavortown Guy Fieri were just some of the cameos viewers enjoyed on game day.

A connected consumer journey: More than just a one-off ad

Super Bowl ads are moving away from being stand-alone experiences, and are now just one touchpoint along an increasingly connected consumer journey that ties a brand’s identity into every interaction. T-Mobile’s ad is a great example of this, offering viewers the option to visit a themed micro-site where they can learn more about the service in an entertaining way.

But how will brands know their Super Bowl LVI ads worked?

After such a significant investment, the pressure to produce a favorable ROI is on. Regardless of what brands are selling, they can tap into multiple tracking and measurement approaches to obtain early insights into whether their Super Bowl marketing and advertising investments will deliver a reasonable ROI.

Top three tactics for measuring impact

1. Track user-initiated behaviors: If your Super Bowl media resonates, viewers might search for your brand and seek out related content on your social and captive brand channels. Check if viewers paid attention to your Super Bowl teasers, ads and related content. Track and analyze excess share of user-initiated behaviors like branded (organic) search and video viewership at the aggregate level.

2. Capture in-media shopping volume: Now your digital and CTV/OTT media can be shoppable with ads leading users either directly to your retail partners or to your own eCommerce site with media-embedded QR codes. Every media touchpoint can be shoppable in real-time through millions of branded storefronts pre and post-game. This is your opportunity to understand visits to retailer eCommerce sites and in-cart purchases long before retail data is available through syndicated research outlets. This is especially critical to learn which products/SKUs are fast movers to help you optimize merchandizing and the supply chain for a better ROI.

3. Verify for incrementality: Incremental visits to your eCommerce destination is an important metric to verify if broad reach, awareness advertising is working for your brand. For visitors who are in-market, you should see an uptick in short-term sales. For those who are not in-market to buy, there’s an ideal opportunity to capture user consent for future communications. At the very minimum, your early indicator in this case would be the growth in the size of your prospect pool with consent for potential future sales enhancing your ROI.

Can’t get enough of Super Bowl? Check out our other article for the Super Bowl.

Did your business run a Super Bowl ad? Find out how Illumin can help you target, engage and convert online consumers like never before.

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About True Reach™ insights platform

Increase total views and time spent on your video campaigns without increasing advertising spend. Our proprietary True Reach™ technology harnesses all publicly available view data on social platforms to track real-time performance and enable decision-making that optimizes your Share of Attention™.