MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. – Ace Metrix®, the new standard in television and video analytics, announced the Brand of the Year Watch List, a compilation of the leading TV brand advertisers in 2012 covering the automotive (luxury and non-luxury), beverages (alcoholic and non-alcoholic), candies & snacks, financial services, general business, household, insurance, packaged foods, personal care, restaurants, retail, technology (including computer hardware & software, mobile devices, and video games), and telecommunications industries. The top five brands in each industry can be seen at acemetrix.com.
“This year’s race for Brand of the Year has been impacted by several factors, including the state of the economy, events like the Olympics, as well as just plain old clever marketing strategies that have boosted some brands significantly, particularly in the beverage, restaurant, technology, and general business sectors,” said Peter Daboll, CEO of Ace Metrix. “One key example of an economic influence on brand choice is in the restaurant sector, which has seen stellar performance this year with every advertiser in the Top 5 achieving an average Ace Score in the 600s. Casual dining restaurants, which have seen the highest scores, represent a small luxury that Americans can indulge in, with many of the ads touting value as a key selling point.”
Other leading themes seen this year in the race for Brand of the Year include:
Beverages
- Big U.S. beer brands like Budweiser, Miller and Coors are noticeably absent from the list of front-runners for alcoholic beverage Brand of the Year. On the other hand, craft brewers such as Blue Moon and Samuel Adams have performed exceptionally well this year and are featured prominently on the Watch List. This is a stark comparison to the beer brands that led the Most Effective list in 2011, including Budweiser, Bud Light, Miller Lite, and Coors Light.
- Soda brands have faltered in 2012, with brands like Pepsi and Dr. Pepper falling out of Watch List contention. Aside from the iconic Coca-Cola brand (also a Summer Olympic sponsor), three of the top five non-alcoholic brands thus far are non-soda drinks, including Ocean Spray, Tropicana and Gatorade.
Restaurants:
- America’s love affair with food has been much more focused on casual dining than quick-service-restaurants on this list, and the restaurant list, overall, is the only industry in which each of the Top 5 brands exceeded an average Ace Score of 600. Americans view casual dining as a small luxury that they can afford in an economy that’s recovering.
General Business
- The Olympics benefited brands like Procter and Gamble, General Electric, Coca-Cola and Visa and AT&T, each on the Watch List. AT&T, for example, took the opportunity as an Olympic sponsor to promote their corporate brand, which, along with their “Don’t Text and Drive” campaign (leveraging Olympic athletes after the games), gave this newcomer a spot on the Watch List.
Technology
- The technology industry comprises the highly competitive mobile device category, software and hardware, video games and televisions.
- We have witnessed a fierce competition among tablet makers and smart phones (both represented in the mobile device category), but certain brands maintain a stronghold on their more notable device. For example, Apple and Samsung both found a seat on the Watch List, but Apple for their iPhone ads and Samsung for their tablet ads.
Ace Metrix scores every nationally airing television advertisement across 23 industries, 85 categories and is therefore uniquely qualified to report a brand’s overall effectiveness across the entire video advertising industry’s body of work over a year, as well as year over year. To qualify for Ace Metrix Brand of the Year, brands must have debuted five or more unique pieces of creative within an industry containing more than 125 pieces creative and five qualifying brands. The top 5 brands to date for each of the 15 categories can be found at www.acemetrix.com/news. Ace Metrix will reveal the final Brand of the Year in the first week of January once all ads for 2012 have been scored.
About Ace Metrix
Ace Metrix® is the new standard in television and video analytics, dedicated to delivering better, faster, and more cost-effective solutions for evaluating video advertising within competitive context. Through the Ace Metrix LIVE™ platform, companies can now access timely, actionable data wherever, whenever they need to, enabling real-time advertising campaign optimization. Combining leading edge technology and patent pending methodology, Ace Metrix is revolutionizing the way marketers measure themselves and their competitive landscape. The Company is privately held and is backed by leading venture capital firms and industry leaders including Hummer Winblad Venture Partners, Palomar Ventures, Leapfrog Ventures, and WPP.
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2012 Brand of the Year Watch List:
The following brands are contenders for brand of the year within their respective Industry, based on average Ace Score for ads airing from January 1st through November 1, 2012.
