This year’s Super Bowl included some historic advertising and overall, the creative was more effective than recent years’ ads. And… there is a potential crisis brewing in advertising.
I’ll get to the potential crisis in a moment. First, some good news. System1 Group’s review of 2025 Super Bowl ad effectiveness has been published. If you like advertising, you’ll LOVE their report. It’s a must read for marketers, whether your ads appear in a Super Bowl or not.
And System1 testing suggests that the 2025 Super Bowl ads were the strongest in the last 6 years.
But… there is trouble hiding in the data.
Towards the end of this article we have a brief backgrounder on System1 for anyone that is not familiar with their methodology. For now, let’s dive into what we learned.
The Good News about Super Bowl 2025 Ads
The System1 Group folks have produced a wonderful report on the 2025 Super Bowl ads that you can access for free here.
There was so much good news!
- 2025 SB ads had the highest average scores over the past 6 years
- The NFL produced the highest scoring sports ad ever tested
- Lay’s produced the highest scoring salty snack ad ever tested
- WeatherTech, Pfizer and Budweiser ads that scored in the top 1% ever tested in their categories
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Four 2025 ads now rank in the top 10 of Super Bowl ads since System1 started testing every Super Bowl ad. The fab four?
Lay’s
NFL (two spots!)
WeatherTech
More Good News – Some Small Indies Shined!
I was also impressed by how many exceptional ads were created by small creative agencies. Rosewood Creative, Erich & Kallman, Mischief, Mirimar and nice&frank all created SB ads in 2025.
And, deserving a special call-out are Highdive and Pinnacle, agencies that created ads with historic results. Highdive’s Lay’s spot is the highest scoring SB ad in System1’s database, and Pinnacle’s WeatherTech spot is the 5th highest scoring ad in their voluminous database.
Interesting News – In-house Agencies’ Super Bowl Commercials
A number of big brand Super Bowl ads were created by in-house agencies. The in-house agencies for Google, Squarespace, Him&Hers, Jeep, Fetch, Universal Studios, Salesforce, Liquid Death and others created SB ads.
In-house agencies are not a new idea; over 80% of enterprise level clients have had in-house agencies for years. It’s also not a new idea that an in-house agency may do a Super Bowl spot. What’s new is how many of them now are doing Super Bowl ads.
Some Bad News – Where is the Brand?
As I watched many of the SB spots this year, I found myself often wondering “what brand is this for?” And I was paying close attention! Heck, watching Super Bowl ads is part of the fun and part of my job!
Despite strong overall creative scores, the System1 research suggests that too many spots this year suffered from poor brand recognition. They use a “fluency” score to represent brand recognition, and the fluency scores for 2025 Super Bowl ads were not up to par. Here’s a key concerning finding reported by System1:
The fluency problem continues. Impact requires recognition, but Super Bowl ad fluency has hit a new low. 21% of viewers couldn’t recall the brand behind the ad. Ad spend is wasted when audiences don’t know who the ad is for. At Super Bowl pricing, that’s millions lost in seconds. Despite delivering the strongest lineup of ads in six years, branding is being left behind. If viewers can’t connect your ad to your brand, you’ve already lost.
This is not a new problem. Look at the trend line from System1:
As System1’s Andrew Tindall said: “Fewer viewers recall what brand each Super Bowl ad is for every year. Imagine spending $7 million on a spot and about a quarter of people have zero idea who the ad was for.”
I think Andrew was being kind – the final price of a :30 SB spot this year was $8 million, and then most brands are spending $2-3 million or more on creative and production. And, of course, marketers build campaigns around their Super Bowl efforts. It’s not unreasonable to estimate the investment at $15 million or more to play in the Super Bowl. That’s an awful lot of money if consumers can’t remember the ad was yours!
More Bad News – Half of Super Bowl Ads Aren’t Very Good
The other bad news lurking in the System1 report is that 49% of 2025 Super Bowl ads failed to exceed modest effectiveness. The 49% number is a better outcome than 2024 (when 59% did not surpass modest effectiveness). But, for a media/creative/production investment of $11 million or more, is modest effectiveness good enough? Clients and their agencies need to do better.
System1: How it Works
System1 Group is an advertising testing firm that helps brands make important decisions about their advertising investment. Their Test Your Ad platform tests advertising overnight, with real consumers, and delivers several key evaluations:
Star Rating: Star Rating measures emotional response to an ad. Emotional response can predict the likely long-term brand growth impact of an ad, essentially providing an estimate of the ad’s creative quality.
Spike Rating: Predicts short-term sales effect over the 8-10 weeks post airing, derived from strength of branding and intensity of emotional response.
Fluency Rating: Assesses the strength of branding in the ad, as measured by the % of viewers recognizing the brand by the end of ad.
Steve Boehler, founder, and partner at Mercer Island Group has led consulting teams on behalf of clients as diverse as Ulta Beauty, Microsoft, UScellular, Nintendo, Kaiser Permanente, Holland America Line, Stop & Shop, Qualcomm, Brooks Running, and numerous others. He founded MIG after serving as a division president in a Fortune 100 when he was only 32. Earlier in his career, Steve Boehler cut his teeth with a decade in Brand Management at Procter & Gamble, leading brands like Tide, Pringles, and Jif.
Mercer Island Group helps marketers and agencies succeed. Company leadership is as much at home with marketers and their C-Suites as in an agency’s boardroom. With marketers, Mercer Island Group is a top 5 agency search consultancy covering all types of agency relationships (creative, media, web, PR, experiential) and assists marketers with marketing organization structure, workflow and critical skill development (briefing, creative evaluation & feedback, etc.). The company also supports leading and aspiring agencies with positioning, pitch and strategy training and pitch support.
