Ace Metrix Announces the 2014 Brands of the Year

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. – Ace Metrix® announced the Brand of the Year winner for each of the 20 most competitive video advertising categories. In a year marked by many divergent creative paths to achieving consumer appeal, only five brands maintained their number one position year-over-year. Google, a dominant player in 2013, retained its position as the top Software & Websites brand by being both relevant and by continuing to change consumers’ opinions of the brand and its technologies. Likewise, Baskin-Robbins and Longhorn Steakhouse both effectively tapped into consumers’ sense of desire, a common theme of winning portfolios in 2014. Reebok maintained its position as the top Apparel & Footwear brand through active, attention-grabbing ads, and Netflix through its likeable and relevant 2014 spots. Meanwhile, Bud Light Lime-A-Rita and LifeLock swept in as advertising newcomers this year to win their respective categories by conveying new information that caused consumers to sit up and take notice.

“Brand of the Year status is a coveted award among advertisers because it is based not on any single opinion or board of creative ambassadors but is representative of vast consumer responses to every new video ad to debut in the year”

“Brand of the Year status is a coveted award among advertisers because it is based not on any single opinion or board of creative ambassadors but is representative of vast consumer responses to every new video ad to debut in the year,” said Peter Daboll, CEO of Ace Metrix. “We applaud each of these outstanding brands for executing effectively on their individual creative approaches and for not only outperforming their category competitors, but also for raising the bar on their own creative scores.”

Many winning brands also achieved strong year-over-year increases in average Ace Score for their 2014 body of work. Budweiser achieved the strongest improvement at 17 percent, followed by Cheerios and Baskin-Robbins (15 percent), Colgate (13 percent) and Mr. Clean (12 percent).

The winning brands listed below achieved their success by drawing power from particular creative attributes and persuasive components. In looking at the ad personalities of each brand’s top-scoring ads, Ace Metrix is able to identify a common force that powered the brand’s annual performance.

*To qualify for Ace Metrix Brand of the Year, a brand must have debuted five or more unique pieces of creative within a category containing more than 100 pieces of creative and five qualifying brands. The Brand of the Year winners earned the highest average Ace Score for their 2014 portfolio of work, outperforming all other qualifying competitors within their category. Data is based on ads initially aired between January 1, 2014 and December 31, 2014, from data available through January 6, 2015.

Deja Vu for Google

Google topped the Software & Websites category with an average Ace Score of 591, having also debuted eight of the top 20 ads (based on its percent gap to the 2014 category norm) in the category. In fact, Google’s “Year in Search 2014,” which, like last year, debuted on the final day of the year, earned an Ace Score of 691, 37 percent above the Software & Websites category – the largest percent gap of any ad to air in 2014.

Budweiser & Samsung See Double

Anheuser-Busch excelled this year, earning two Brand of the Year titles. Its flagship brand Budweiser earned an average Ace Score of 577, rising from its third place spot in 2013 to top the Beer category. Budweiser outperformed the category average by 13 percent and outdid its own average score from 2013 by 17 percent—the largest individual improvement among winning brands. Budweiser debuted four of the top 20 performing ads (based on its percent gap to the 2014 category norm) of the year. This year’s portfolio included a strong brand-building focus and included two long-form ads that placed among the top five of the 2014 Super Bowl.

In addition, Anheuser-Busch introduced a new malt beverage brand, Bud Light Lime-A-Rita, which swept the Spirits, Malt Beverages & Wine category by effectively imparting new information while changing perception of the known Bud Light brand.

Samsung also earned Brand of the Year titles in two categories. Samsung Mobile won the Mobile Devices category by relying heavily on the tactic of conveying compelling product innovations through relatable feature demonstrations. Samsung Mobile produced 12 of the top 20 Mobile Device ads this year, including “Water Resistant” (Ace Score 739), the second highest-scoring ad across all categories.

Samsung Hardware, which earned an average Ace Score of 613, outperformed the close second place brand Intel (average Ace Score 606) and stiff competitive hardware brands HP, Google and Microsoft.

Two brands rose from their number two position in 2013: Colgate, which took the Personal Care title from Oral-B and outperformed competitors Crest and Sensodyne through relevance and desire, and Farmers, which overcame Liberty Mutual through likeability.

Two introductory brands, including the aforementioned Bud Light Lime-A-Rita, won Brand of the Year titles in competitive categories, displacing perennial winners. LifeLock leveraged strong information and relevance scores to replace Wells Fargo, Citibank, JP Morgan Chase and, 2013 winning brand, TD Ameritrade.

Brands that earned the highest overall place on the Emotional Sentiment Index (ESI) (of qualifying categories) were Mr. Clean (ESI 77), whose nostalgic ads in 2014 also won through relevance and desire, and Cheerios (ESI 71), whose ads were both likeable and created desire.

For more details on the portfolio of ads debuted by these winning brands, contact us and visit acemetrix.com.

About Ace Metrix Brand of the Year

Ace Metrix scores every nationally airing television advertisement across 24 industries, 93 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 a category containing more than 100 pieces of creative and five qualifying brands. Ace Metrix gathered more than 3.5 million responses from approximately 700,000 consumers that generated creative potential scores for nearly 7,000 new video ads in 2014. Each ad is scored against a unique panel of 500+ consumers, demographically balanced to the US census for age, gender and income. The Ace Score is the holistic measure of ad creative impact and includes data on attributes such as Persuasion, Likeability, Information, Attention, Change, Relevance, Desire and Watchability. Hundreds of qualitative consumer verbatim responses are collected for each ad and inform additional measures such as the Emotional Sentiment Index.

About Ace Metrix

Ace Metrix® is the 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 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.

Follow Ace Metrix on Twitter for sustained insight: @Ace_Metrix.

Note: Ace Metrix®, the Ace Metrix logo design, Ace Score®, Ace Metrix LIVE® and Creative Lifecycle Management® are registered trademarks of Ace Metrix. Other trademarks are property of their respective owners.