Super Waste of Money: Analysis Shows $79M Squandered on Unfocused, Poorly-Executed Commercials During the Big Game

By: Stew Redwine

Ad agency Oxford Road calculates high-priced spots were just 25 percent effective

LOS ANGELES – FEBRUARY 4, 2018 – While the New England Patriots  lost Super Bowl LII on the scoreboard, the biggest losers of the big game may have been the advertisers who wasted some $78,750,000 with unclear messages and poor execution in their commercials, this according to Los Angeles-based ad agency Oxford Road.  

Using its proprietary Audiolytics™ scoring system, Oxford Road performed a real-time analysis of all 63 national commercials that ran during the February 4 game, evaluating them based on nine key aspects.  The agency concluded that the commercials were, on average, just 25 percent effective.  With each 30-second spot costing over $5 million (not including production costs or ad agency fees, which could add millions more), each commercial wasted around $1.25 million.

“Too many firms focus on getting a cheap laugh or chasing trends at the expense of highlighting their overall value proposition,” said Dan Granger, CEO of Oxford Road. “As we all know, the Super Bowl is a great platform to launch and build brands, but it must be done within the context of what the product or service stands for. When you consider how much these ads cost, it’s important to make sure these firms get the most for their money.

“Unfortunately, our analysis shows that the overwhelming majority do not.”  

Audiolytics evaluates nine key components of each commercial’s message including Setup, Value Proposition, Positioning, Demonstration, Substantiation, Offer, Scarcity, Path and Execution. Based on analysis from Oxford Road’s team, totals from each of these categories were weighted and combined to generate the Audiolytics score. This number is then multiplied by the cost of the estimated ad cost to determine how much was spent effectively versus ineffectively.

According to Oxford Road, the ad that performed worst was the T-Mobile spot “Little Ones.”  The minute-long commercial, which aired during the fourth quarter, when the game’s outcome was still very much in doubt, delivered an Audiolytics score of just 18.3 percent, and wasted an estimated $6.4 million of its total ad buy.  The best performing ad was one-minute spot “Do the Math and Switch to Sprint” from T-Mobile’s cell phone competitor, which included the AI robot coworkers.  It delivered an Audiolytics score of 95.3 and effectively used $9.5 million of the cost of the ad.  

Audiolytics is Oxford Road’s proprietary method to grade each commercial on its likelihood to drive in-market performance.  In addition to the version used for the immediate analysis, the firm also offers Audiolytics with 71 measurement categories and a detailed report identifying successes and failures for each spot. The company media planning practice relies heavily on leveraging score-based media matching, based on consumer behavior predictions founded in hundreds of millions of dollars in performance data across dozens of product categories.