TORONTO – Fourteen of the top 20 most-engaging ads in CTV’s broadcast of Super Bowl 50 earlier this month came from advertisers exclusive to the Canadian broadcast, while another four had a unique ad targeted to Canadians.
That’s among the findings of a new viewer engagement study commissioned by Bell Media and conducted by research company Brainsights. The study used portable brain wave readers, known as electroencephalograms, to measure the brain activity of 54 adult Canadians as they watched the big game. They then mined the resulting data to determine which advertisements drove the greatest response in the brains of the audience.
The top ads in the study delivered higher than average overall subconscious activation of Attention, Emotional Connection, and Encoding to Memory (ACE) scores, compared to the game itself. The Top 5 spots were taken by Canadian-owned brand Royale (#1; “Tiger Towel Food Truck”), along with Honda (#2; “Civic Nation Membership”), Mazda (#3; “The Proposal”), Beyoncé (#4; “The Formation Tour”), and Ford (#5; “Undisputed”).
In total, 18 of the top 20 ads in CTV’s broadcast were commercials crafted for Canadian viewers. The only U.S. Super Bowl ads to rank among the top 20 in Canada were Beyoncé’s Formation Tour (#4), capitalizing on her halftime show performance, and the Doritos “Dogs” commercial (#16).
“This study confirmed that ads specifically created for the Canadian audience are a meaningful part of the of the Super Bowl experience for Canadian viewers,” said Jeff Hersh, Bell Media’s VP of strategy, revenue management and research, in the news release. “Bell Media intends to conduct additional neuroscientific research to deliver new opportunities and advertising solutions related to our content.”
