USA Today Super Bowl Ad Meter

The USA Today Super Bowl Ad Meter is an annual survey taken of television commercials by the "USA Today""' newspaper in a live poll during the telecast in the United States of the annual professional American football championship game of the National Football League. The survey, began in 1989 uses live response on a zero-to-ten scale (zero being the worst, ten the best) of focus groups based in McLean, Virginia, the newspaper headquarters and one (or more) sites around the country.

Background

The Super Bowl became the must-see for advertisers during the third quarter of the telecast of Super Bowl XVIII on CBS, when Apple Computer debuted a one-time-only advertisement for their Macintosh computer titled 1984, directed by Ridley Scott. As the Los Angeles Raiders routed the Washington Redskins, 38-9, the Apple commercial, not the game, was the most-talked about item around watercoolers the very next day. Since then, major advertisers have used the game, paying as much as seven figures (averaging $3 million for one 30-second slot as of|2008|lc=on, not including production costs) to showcase their work and generate buzz that many people tune into television's biggest event of the year just to watch the commercials, not just the actual game. For those reasons, USA Today started the Ad Meter, a poll that gives live responses per second of each commercial. According to the newspaper, ads by rule are limited are those shown during the game - from opening kickoff to the end of the game, excluding those shown at halftime or local commercials - are officially qualified for consideration in the Ad Meter survey.

=Past winners="'

Multiple winners

*Anheuser-Busch (Budweiser, Bud Light brands) - 10 (1999-2008)
*Pepsi-Cola (Pepsi, Diet Pepsi brands) - 6 (1991, 1994-1998)
*Nike - 2 (1990, 1992)

External links

* [http://admeter.usatoday.com USA Today's Ad Meter website]