As always, Super Bowl LIV didn’t disappoint. With the Chiefs’ historic win and the halftime show alone, there is plenty to discuss from the big game. However, because we specialize in automotive marketing, we’re going to focus instead on the OEM advertisers and their ads for the Super Bowl this year.

VIEWERSHIP & AUDIENCE INSIGHTS

Nielsen hasn’t released the final numbers as of publishing, but it was reported that 193.8 million adults planned to watch the Super Bowl this year. According to the National Retail Federation, the game is most important for 47% of men, compared to 19% of women. Meanwhile, the commercials are ranked highest among women and lowest with men.

Knowing that women drive 70% – 80% of consumer purchasing, it doesn’t come as a surprise they are more interested in the ads. That said, 29% of women said that they don’t watch the game at all, compared to 18% of men. Either way though, with all of the hype around the Super Bowl every year, it’s not a bad thing to build awareness for new models and features with so many viewers at once.

The trick for any high cost ad campaign, be it the Super Bowl or a dealership promotion, is integrating digital channels and video streaming platforms. As long as you build a larger omni-channel campaign around a big tv spot, you can more closely measure results and get as much mileage out of it as possible.

SUPER BOWL AD BUYS & CROWD FAVORITES

Despite questions about the true value of advertising during the Super Bowl, demand is still high among advertisers. This year, the average cost for a 30-second spot hit a record high of $5.6 million. More than a few advertisers bought up multiple 30-second spots, spending upwards of $11 million each in media buys alone.

After selling out in November, Fox added more spots to the line up. In total, the network sold 82 ad units, translating to more than $400 million worth of revenue.

According to USA Today’s Ad Meter, Jeep’s 60-second Groundhog Day spot was the most liked Super Bowl commercial by consumers. The spot narrowly beat out Hyundai’s star studded “Smaht Pahk” commercial for the top spot though.

AUTOMOTIVE BRAND RECALL & ONLINE ENGAGEMENT

As we just mentioned, Jeep and Hyundai were both fan favorites. In addition to the top rated Sonata Smart Park spot,Hyundai also unveiled the Genesis GV80 as the “new luxury” standard. And looking at search data from Google Trends, the ad got a huge response online.

The spot that Porsche did to promote the Taycan was fantastic, and has certainly generated a lot of buzz for the new model. However, the Genesis drove the biggest search spike of any make/model in the past 24 hours.

Taking a quick look at OEM brand recall and search interest, Porsche had the highest spike during the game. That could partially be because it was their first time advertising during the Super Bowl since 1997; it also could very well be attributed to how cool the ad and new Taycan are overall. Meanwhile, Toyota peaked several hours after the game was over.

We dove deeper to see which subregions had the highest interest for each brand, and came up with some interesting findings.

Porsche had the highest interest around Washington D.C., California and New Jersey. Interest for Hyundai peaked in Rhode Island, Massachusetts (cause you know…Boston), and Washington D.C.

Meanwhile, Jeep, Toyota and GMC were led by Michigan, Hawaii and North Dakota, respectively. You can dive deeper on each brand, as well as rising queries in the Google Trends charts included below.

FINAL THOUGHTS

The key takeaway here is that the Super Bowl isn’t just an awareness play at the Tier 1 level, or at least it doesn’t have to be. The millions spent to advertise the new models and features can benefit your dealership if you capitalize on the post-show buzz. With two automotive ads leading the charts for fan favorites, there are plenty of opportunities to get in on the conversation.

And the best part? It doesn’t have to cost you a dime in advertising. This is one of those rare opportunities where you can get in front of thousands of people organically, but you have to act fast.