Super Bowl study shows ad views don't equal recall

Beatgrid has published new analysis of Super Bowl LX advertising that questions the industry's reliance on video completion rates as a measure of effectiveness.

The cross-media measurement firm compared how long people watched ads with how well they remembered the brands over the week after the game. The data shows that the ad with the strongest completion rate was followed by one of the steepest declines in ad awareness, while another ad with a markedly lower completion rate delivered the biggest gain in awareness.

Beatgrid tracked 22 Super Bowl LX advertisers using a panel of 10,775 people with verified Super Bowl exposure. The research combined passive behavioural measurement of ad viewing with aided recall surveys.

Kinder Bueno posted the highest average 100% completion rate at 80.8%. Over the same Monday-to-Friday period, ad awareness for the brand fell by 11.6 percentage points.

Michelob Ultra recorded an average 100% completion rate of 63.6% and a 7.3 percentage point increase in ad awareness across the same week-the strongest positive performance among the advertisers tracked.

Completion versus recall

The comparison challenges a common assumption in video advertising: that completion rate is a reliable proxy for brand impact. High completion indicates viewers stayed with an ad, but Beatgrid's figures suggest that does not necessarily translate into people retaining the brand association.

Beatgrid described a category it calls the "Entertainment Trap", where viewers watch an ad through to the end but do not remember the advertiser. It placed Kinder Bueno in this group, alongside Hellmann's and Budweiser.

It also outlined a four-quadrant framework plotting completion rate against change in ad awareness over the week after the Super Bowl. The "Sweet Spot" includes brands that delivered both high completion and positive awareness change. Beatgrid placed Google Gemini in that quadrant, with 71.1% completion and a 3.6 percentage point gain in awareness.

Beatgrid labelled Michelob Ultra an "Efficiency Winner". In this segment, ads post moderate completion rates while delivering the strongest improvement in ad awareness. The dataset also identified a "Needs Work" group-Lay's, Grubhub, Pringles, Pepsi and Volkswagen-which saw flat or declining awareness regardless of completion, according to the analysis.

Week-long decay

The analysis tracked ad awareness from Monday through Friday after the Super Bowl. Beatgrid observed a mid-week dip across most brands as discussion of the event faded. Brands that sustained awareness gains through Friday tended to run active social strategies, planned media support, or follow-up activations that renewed attention mid-week.

The findings also point to a potential reporting gap for marketers who rely heavily on viewability and completion metrics in post-campaign readouts. Beatgrid's measurements suggest a brand can post a strong completion rate and still lose ad awareness over the following days.

Measurement method

Beatgrid verified ad exposure deterministically at the person level using passive audio matching via mobile devices and automatic content recognition technology. It tracked completion and on-screen viewability at 25%, 50%, 75% and 100% thresholds.

Brand impact was then calculated by layering aided recall surveys over verified exposure data. Beatgrid reported that the overall panel data was unweighted, with a split of 54.2% male and 45.6% female. For the aided recall surveys, it cited a sample of 402 respondents who watched the Super Bowl and were surveyed between Monday and Friday after the game.

In additional metrics, Beatgrid reported that Michelob Ultra purchase intent grew steadily across the week, in line with its awareness trajectory, while Kinder Bueno purchase intent remained flat. Consideration was flat across the brands in the dataset, according to Beatgrid.

"The industry has been optimising for completion rates as a proxy for effectiveness. This data suggests that's the wrong question. The ads that people fully viewed weren't the ones they remembered. That should make every CMO rethink how they measure Super Bowl ROI - and frankly, all video advertising," said Daniel Tjondronegoro, CEO, Beatgrid.

Beatgrid plans to apply the same approach across other major events and video campaigns using its cross-platform panel measurement.