Winner: Amazon
Amazon's Super Bowl spot starring celebrity couple Ellen DeGeneres and Portia de Rossi, and imagining what life was like without Alexa, struck a chord.
It was the most-watched Super Bowl commercial as of 10 p.m. on game day, according to Google, and had more than 39,000 mentions online as of 10:15 p.m., according to Brandwatch.
Winner: Google
Google's tearjerker about its virtual assistant helping a man remember his late wife was the most effective ad, according to Unruly, which measures an ad's engagement and metrics like favorability and purchase intent.
Nearly half of survey respondents had an intense emotional reaction to "Loretta," and the ad scored 6.5 out of 10. It also had more than 121,000 online mentions, per Brandwatch, with 10,000 of those mentions coming within two minutes of the ad airing.
Winner: Jeep
Jeep's recreation of "Groundhog Day" featuring Bill Murray got more than 47,000 online mentions, accounting for nearly 6% of the entire conversation around the Super Bowl, according to Talkwalker.
It also received a score of 5.2 stars from System1, which rates ads from 1 to 5.9 stars based on the emotional resonance they garner to predict long-term growth potential for the brand.
Winner: Microsoft
The percentage of spots including women was up 90% from 74% last year, according to Hive Media and Bain.
One was Microsoft's, with its ad featuring Katie Sowers, the first female — and openly LGBTQ — coach to ever be in the NFL championship game.
The ad got 5.3 stars from System1, which rates ads from 1 to 5.9 stars based on the emotional resonance they get to predict long-term growth potential for the brand. It also elicited intense emotional engagement from 47% of Unruly's survey audience, obtaining a score of 5.7.
Winner: Olay
Olay's all-female Super Bowl spot featured successful women asking "Is there enough space in space for women?" and pledged to donate $1 for every tweet directed @OlaySkin with the hashtag #MakeSpaceforWomen to Women Who Code.
Olay captured nearly 20% of the conversation around the Super Bowl, according to Talkwalker. The hashtag #MakeSpaceForWomen was being used even before the game, but spiked again during the broadcast.
Benjamin Hordell, partner at ad agency DXAgency, called it "the best social integration," saying that "incentivizing the tweet was a nice way to make it happen."
Loser: Hulu
Hulu may have been trying to stand out in a crowded ad environment, but the company got egg on its face after it ran a Super Bowl ad starring Tom Brady to promote its live sports streaming service just minutes after the service crashed for subscribers before the big game.
Hulu mentions leapt by 2,100% right around kickoff due to customers experiencing connectivity issues, per Brandwatch.
Loser: Planters
The death of Planters mascot Mr. Peanut trended online weeks before the Super Bowl, but the buzz was dampened after the unexpected death of Kobe Bryant.
Ultimately, Planters didn't get rid of a mascot but gave birth to a new one called "Baby Nut," and set up a store for his reincarnation. But it didn't end well, with Twitter suspending three meme accounts launched by Planters, saying they violated Twitter's spam and platform manipulation policy.
Loser: Procter & Gamble
Procter and Gamble's ad was a mashup of its brand mascots including Mr. Clean and the Charmin bear.
But the effort ended up being a confusing mess with actress Sofia Vergara trying to stitch together a series of scenes with no story arc.
These P&G crossover ads are awful #marketing
— Rishi Mahalaha (@rishimahalaha) February 3, 2020Loser: Quibi
Jeffrey Katzenberg and Meg Whitman tried to drum up awareness around their forthcoming mobile streaming platform Quibi with an ad about a bank heist gone awry.
While the ad may have been trying to inform viewers that they can watch episodes on the platform in 10 minutes or less, a lot of people were confused.
USA Today's Ad Meter, which lets people rank Super Bowl ads online on a scale of 1 to 10, gave Quibi's "Bank Heist" a rating of 4.4, making it the fourth-worst ad.
Still, it was the eighth-most watched Super Bowl commercial as of 10 p.m. on game day, according to Google — perhaps because people watched it again to figure out what it was.
Damn you all spent ~$5 mil for a vague Super Bowl commercial and your company isn’t even out yet? I forgot your name immediately and only seeing this now from an additional expensive ad. Where is all this irresponsible investor money?
— Grant Wilkinson (@grantfwilkinson) February 3, 2020Loser: Tide
Tide won huge accolades for its 2018 Super Bowl ads arguing that every ad was a Tide ad because technically, any ad with clean clothes could be one.
But the same approach fell flat this year, even though it did stir up some surprise by bringing back Bud Knight from the dead. There was a small spike in the conversation around Tide's first ad (1,000 mentions), accounting to Brandwatch, but the ad did nothing for Bud Light.