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- The New England Patriots may have ultimately prevailed, but both the game and the ads at Super Bowl 2019 were a bit of a snooze-fest.
- Still, there were some surprises, like HBO taking over Bud Light’s ad to make it all about "Game of Thrones."
- Scroll on to see the best and worst Super Bowl commercials of 2019.
It wasn’t just slow on the field during this year’s Super Bowl game — but also off it.
Despite 54 advertisers shelling out $5.25 million for 30 seconds of screen time during the big game for a total of 93 Super Bowl ads, according to iSpot, most ads this year were a bit of a snooze-fest.
Dogs and robots were plentiful, with brands from Sprint and TurboTax to Michelob Ultra featuring them as characters in their spots. There were some surprises, like HBO taking over Bud Light’s ad to make it all about Game of Thrones.
Read More: Here’s the full list of all the Super Bowl commercials that ran this year
Here are our picks for winners and losers of this year’s Super Bowl.
Winners: Bud Light & HBO
HBO/Bud Light
HBO’s unexpected takeover of Bud Light’s "Jousting Match" ad to promote the upcoming season of Game of Thrones had everyone talking.
The ad, which cost an estimated $9.4 million, according to iSpot.tv, amassed more than 183 million social impressions.
The ad (and its dragons) may have set social media ablaze, but it didn’t do much for Bud Light as a brand, according to ad agency Oxford Road. It scored a low 29.65% on its Audiolytics ranking.
The Bud Light campaign was also popular among advertising professionals on the work chat app Fishbowl, representing 23% of all Super Bowl campaign discussions on the platform. The campaign with HBO was also ranked #1 on a poll on the app, capturing 30% of the votes.
But Bud Light had three other commercials, which touted how it doesn’t use corn syrup — disppointing corn farmers across the country, according to Brandwatch.
Winner: PepsiCo
PepsiCo
The ad for its flagship product featured Lil Jon, Steve Carell, and Cardi B and managed to push Pepsi into the conversation, with nearly 18,000 mentions, according to Salesforce.
In fact, Pepsi’s #PepsiMoreThanOK hashtag registered more than 65.2 million impressions, according to Brandwatch.
Pepsi’s ad for its new sparkling water brand Bubly also did well, with Oxford Road giving it a score of 61%. The agency uses a proprietary data-driven process called Audiolytics that grades ads based on 71 weighted components, giving each commercial a unique score.
With Canadian singer Michael Bublé starrin in the Bubly ad, the ad was also the best use of celebrity and the best new-to-market brand, per Oxford Road.
Winner: Amazon
Amazon
Amazon Alexa’s fun self-deprecating jab at itself "Not Everything Makes the Cut" also won over audiences, scoring 7.34 on USA Today’s 2019 Ad Meter and securing the #2 spot.
See the rest of the story at Business Insider
See Also:
- Here’s the full list of all the Super Bowl commercials that ran this year
- Here are the 10 buzziest commercials going into Super Bowl 2019
- We chatted with a veteran ad director with more than 80 Super Bowl commercials under his belt. Here’s why he thinks Super Bowl ads today ‘stink.’
SEE ALSO: Here’s the full list of all the Super Bowl commercials that ran this year
Source: Business Insider