Super Bowl Advertisement Analysis - Final Project

Michael Brown

12/1/2021

The goal of this research was to analyze trends and patterns of Super Bowl advertisements over the years.

Two data sets were used for this analysis. One was downloaded from Kaggle and the second was downloaded from data.world

library(tidyverse)
library(plotly)
library(readr)
superbowl_ads <- read_csv("/Users/michaelbrown/R/Final Project/superbowl-ads.csv")
Company_by_year <- read_csv("/Users/michaelbrown/R/Final Project/Company  by year.csv")
Company_Id <- read_csv("/Users/michaelbrown/R/Final Project/Company by id.csv")
kaggle_ads <- read_csv("/Users/michaelbrown/R/Final Project/superbowl-ads kaggle.csv")
Ads_per_year <- read_csv("/Users/michaelbrown/R/Final Project/Ads per year.csv")
type_by_year <- read_csv("/Users/michaelbrown/R/Final Project/histogram type by year.csv")
kind_of_ad <- read_csv("/Users/michaelbrown/R/Final Project/kind of ad.csv")

Both data sets were large and unclean so I cleaned the data into smaller files for each graph in Microsoft Excel and then imported them back into R.

I started by analyzing the data.world data first. In this data set, the creator, FiveThirtyEight, included data about the top 10 brands that had the most Super Bowl ads from 2000-2020. From there, the staff at FiveThirtyEight created seven defining characteristics of Super Bowl ads and then evaluated each ad from the brands on the characteristics.

The seven characteristics were:

  1. Funny: If the ad was funny
  2. Product Shown Quickly: If the product was quickly shown in the ad
  3. Patriotic: If the ad was patriotic
  4. Celebrity: If a celebrity was in the ad
  5. Dangerous: If the ad showed anything dangerous
  6. Animals: If there were animals included in the ad
  7. Sex: If the ad had any sexual aspects

Ads that were funny and had the product shown quickly were the two most common characteristics of ads from 2000-2020. Since Super Bowl ads are very expensive for only 30 seconds of screen time, companies do not have time to be wasted. For this reason, by having the product being shown quickly in the advertisement, the company can show the audience the product as much as possible without spending the money for multiple advertisement slots. Secondly, the Super Bowl is the once chance for companies to have the largest American TV audience all watching at the same time. In order to make a lasting impression on all the viewers, companies usually rely on humor to obtain their attention and stay in the mind of the audience after the game ends.

Bud Light had the most commercials that met a defining characteristic in each category except for two. The two characteristics that Bud Light did not have the most in, Budweiser had the most in. Bud Light and Budweiser are both owned by the same parent company, Anheuser-Busch. Since the target audience of football games includes beer drinkers Anheuser-Busch can appeal to a large percentage of the audience, justifying the marketing costs to advertise during the Super Bowl.

The number of Super Bowl ads per year by each brand is not what I expected. Rather than being consistent with the number of the advertisements each brand ran, it varies drastically from year to year. Coming as no surprise from the last chart, Bud Light had the most ads or was shortly behind the leader each year. One explanation for why the number of Bud Light ads dropped after 2008 was because Bud Light became the official beer sponsor of the NFL shortly after in 2011. By having their company already being advertised all season long in the NFL stadiums and on each broadcasted game, Anheuser-Busch doesn’t have to buy as many ads during the Super Bowl.

After looking at the defining characteristics and the data set from FiveThirtyEight, I wanted to see if similar trends would be shown with all the Super Bowl ads. The Kaggle set, included entries for Super Bowl advertisements from 1969-2020.

Once again, I am surprised that the number of advertisements varied year by year. After seeing the fluctuations in Super Bowl ads per year, I wanted to see if the cost of a Super Bowl ad each year was a cause for this. The cost of a Superbowl ad has steadily been rising each year and does not correlate with the fluctuations of the number of Super Bowl ads each year.

Although the Super Bowl is the most-watched American TV spectacle and a true advertising dream for companies, there are no common trends or patterns with the ads year after year. One speculation for why this might be is some companies do not see an effective ROI on their advertisement the year before and don’t want to buy another advertisement slot the next year. Another reason might be that certain companies have found more effective ways to advertise to their audience and Super Bowl ads might be a thing of the past for most companies except for the large companies that buy them every year. Finally, it is hard to justify spending 5.6 million dollars for 30 seconds and with those prices only excepted to rise, companies will shy away.