Love Conquers All in Ace Metrix’s List of Top Breakthrough Ads of Q1

Viewers reject broad stroke pandering and preaching in favor of the importance of family and home

LOS ANGELES – Ace Metrix, the leader in measuring the impact of video advertising, released a list of the top ten Breakthrough ads from the first quarter of 2017.

#Love Conquers All in @Ace_Metrix List of Top Breakthrough Ads of Q1 #advertising

The first quarter of each year reliably delivers an abundance of great advertising, as significant audience-grabbing events such as the Super Bowl, Grammy Awards, and the Oscars inspire some of the industry’s best work. This year, the close of a particularly unruly election cycle saw some brands attempt to send a message to viewers with spots on immigration, fake news, and more, while celebrity award winners shared impassioned viewpoints. However, American viewers wanted none of it, instead embracing brands that delivered ads reflecting who we are, pointedly eschewing the urge to tell us who to be or what to think. Tellingly, this top Breakthrough list reflects universal values and reminds us that love truly does conquer all. Brands that inspired us to improve our own daily lives and paid homage to our everyday struggles won out over those making broad stroke statements about worldwide issues.

Below are the ads ranked by Breakthrough capacity, which combines the Attention and Likeability component scores. These are the best of the best, achieving Breakthrough levels recorded by less than 1% of all ads.

“Reach and resonance are both necessary to achieve marketing results,” said Peter Daboll, CEO of Ace Metrix. “All the reach in the world can’t fix creative that consumers don’t connect with or simply won’t watch. According to the latest Deloitte survey, 80% of millennials and gen Z’ers skip TV and digital video commercials. A recent study published by Ad Age confirmed that the likeability of a message trumps delivery when looking at brand sales lift, which should be painfully obvious — who is going to watch something they don’t like, no matter how short? This is why our Breakthrough metric uniquely lends equal consideration to likeability as well as attention.”

“To really resonate with viewers, brands need to walk the talk if they are going to deliver an emotionally evocative message that’s believable,” continued Daboll. “Congratulations to Angel Soft for securing two ads in the top ten list this quarter and to all the winners for giving us compelling storytelling that reflects their brand’s values.”

Six of the top ten ads reminded us of the importance of family, with two offering kudos to single parents, and another two, the search for a home (pet or human). Angel Soft’s “Be Soft. Be Strong.” campaign landed two of the top ten, while only three Super Bowl 51 ads claimed a top position.

Hyundai’s “A Better Super Bowl” earned the title of highest Breakthrough ad of the quarter by filming during the actual game as military families were connected onscreen with their enlisted family members to experience the game together. At a close second (and tied for top attention-getter) was Angel Soft’s 2:00 digital “Happy National Single Parent’s Day,” which voiced the struggles of real single parents, and announced the brand’s gifts of a year’s worth of childcare, preschool, or rent to the featured parents as a means of marking the national holiday.

In third place, Coldwell Banker reminded us that we all just need “Somebody to Love” in a heartwarming spot espousing stray pet adoption. All three top Breakthrough ads brought viewers to tears without preaching a word.

Tied for fourth were a long-form digital ad from Proctor & Gamble and a :30 TV spot from Sherwin-Williams, both visually evocative. Sherwin-Williams’ artistic “Safari” showcased visuals created using 30,000 paint chips by 24 production artists over 5,600 hours that were rated the single best thing by 73% of viewers. Set to the 4 Non Blondes song “What’s Up,” a combination of visuals and hopeful message elicited a strong emotional reaction to P&G’s “#WeSeeEqual” missive of inclusion in honor of International Women’s Day.

Ace Metrix measures ad creative effectiveness based on viewer reaction to video ads, providing the advertising industry an unbiased resource to measure creative impact. Ace Metrix scores every national television ad, and an expanding proportion of digital ads, across 96 categories creating a complete comparative database—Ace Metrix LIVE®. A unique panel of at least 500 consumers, demographically balanced to the U.S. census, scores each ad in the exact same manner. The results are presented on a scale of 1–950, which represents scoring on creative attributes such as Attention, Likeability, Information, Change, Relevance, Desire and Watchability. Ace Metrix applies a natural language processing algorithm to the hundreds of qualitative verbatim responses collected for each ad, deriving additional metrics related to emotional engagement.

About Ace Metrix

Ace Metrix® is the standard in television and digital video analytics, dedicated to measuring the impact of video ad creative. We provide data and insight to enable marketers and creative teams to produce more impactful work, test and adjust creative executions in real-time, and understand what creative drivers impact their brand KPIs. http://www.acemetrix.com

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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