The Super Bowl Scores For Advertisers

Norwalk, CT - Research conducted 24 hours after Tampa Bay's decisive win over Oakland in Super Bowl XXXVII showed that adult male television viewers who watched the game could recall many of the ads shown throughout Sunday's game, a study by the leading global advertising research firm, Ipsos-ASI, found. The January 26, 2003 Super Bowl was a blow-out, with little doubt about the outcome after the first half. But audience advertisement awareness was not affected by the lopsided contest, the annual Ipsos-ASI study found. The Norwalk, CT - based company - which has tested more than 25,000 commercials since it was founded in 1962 - found that Super Bowl XXXVII far exceeded other football games tested as a vehicle for advertising memorable to the hard-to-reach male audience. The Ipsos-ASI study found that male television viewers were three times more likely to report having watched all the advertisements in a given quarter of the game (compared to men watching college bowl games or the AFC Championship game), and were able to remember up to four times as many advertisements than other championship games. "The Super Bowl is a super environment for advertising. The game not only delivers close to 100 million viewers, but attentive male viewers with exceptional recall of the ads. Clearly, the NFL has created an enviable advertising opportunity," said David Brandt, executive vice-president, global client services, for Ipsos-ASI. The Ipsos-ASI results are based on interviews comparing advertisement recall among men watching the Super Bowl with advertisement recall among men who watched the AFC Conference title game or a college football bowl game (the Fiesta Bowl or the Rose Bowl). This year, the company found that 37% of the audience reported to have watched all of the 60-or so paid ads in any given quarter during the Super Bowl compared with only 4% for the Rose Bowl, 13% for the Fiesta Bowl, and 7% for the AFC Championship game. The critics' choice is not necessarily the most effective advertisement, the Ipsos-ASI study also showed. Reebok advertisements won critical and popular acclaim, but did not win, place or show on the list of advertisements male Super Bowl viewers were most likely to recall. Neither did advance Super Bowl hype necessarily improve recall. Some 39% of viewers reported having heard something about specific Super Bowl advertisements prior to the telecast, but this hype-exposed group was actually less likely than average to remember any advertisements. Ipsos-ASI conducted interviews via the internet with 1,200 adult males this month after each of the four biggest football games of the year, and found that:

• 87% could remember without prompting the name of at least one of the advertisers in the Super Bowl while only 33% could remember an advertiser from the Rose Bowl game, 53% from the Fiesta Bowl and 54% from the AFC Championship game.
• The average viewer could remember unaided 3.5 advertisers in the Super Bowl (up from 3.2 advertisers during the 2002 Super Bowl game), compared to only about one advertiser for the college and AFC Championship games.
• 48% claimed to have watched all the ads during the Super Bowl halftime show - up from 40% in 2002. By comparison, only 14% watched all the ads during halftime of the Rose Bowl, 21% during the Fiesta Bowl and 16% for the AFC Championship game.
• Budweiser and Pepsi fared the best during the Super Bowl. 66% of the audience could remember advertising for Budweiser, and 44% remembered ads for Pepsi. Ads from these two companies also fared best in 2002, Ipsos-ASI found.

Methodology Ipsos-ASI conducted interviews via the internet with adult males between the ages of 21 and 60 the day after each game. A total of 1,200 adult males were interviewed in the four waves: the Jan. 1, 2003 Rose Bowl Game, the Jan. 3, 2003 Fiesta Bowl, the AFC Championship game on January 19, 2003 and last Sunday's Super Bowl game between Tampa Bay and Oakland. The research results for each game are considered accurate within +/-4.7 percentage points 9 times out of 10. For more information on this release, please contact: Pam Maltby Senior Vice-President Ipsos-ASI 203.840.3660