Avinash Kaushik shares secret sauce for measuring Super Bowl ads

Super Bowl 2025 will be held on Sunday, Feb. 9. The “Big Game” will have around 50 minutes of TV commercials trying to change the hearts, minds, and actions of over 100 million viewers.

However, many marketing executives ask, “Are Super Bowl ads effective?”

And with a 30-second spot during the Big Game costing $8 million, some are also asking, “Are Super Bowl commercials worth it?”

I asked Avinash Kaushik, who spent 16 years leading analytics at Google before becoming the chief strategy officer of Croud, to share the secret sauce for measuring Super Bowl ads. 

Below is an edited transcript of my questions and his answers.

Are Super Bowl ads really effective?

Greg Jarboe (GJ): “Back in 2017, The Harvard Business Review published ‘A Super Bowl Ad Is the Equivalent of Lighting Money on Fire (Which Can Be More Strategic Than It Sounds)’ by Tim Sullivan and Ray Fisman. What’s your take on this topic? Are Super Bowl ads effective?”

Avinash Kaushik (AK): “If your Super Bowl commercial can stand out among the 60 to 80 that air during the Big Game, then it can be effective. 

But it’s really hard for anybody to remember 10 ads after the Super Bowl, which means they aren’t effective for the rest of the ads.

At my former employer, we did studies around the half-life of a Super Bowl commercial. How long does it take for ads to lose half of the buzz that being in the USA Today Ad Meter, the YouTube AdBlitz winners, or somebody else’s top 10 list gives them?”

The short half-life of Super Bowl buzz

AK: “Marketers may have run Super Bowl commercials to generate water-cooler conversations. So, how long does it take to lose half and what you had gained when the Super Bowl ended? 

It takes less than six hours to lose half of what you have gained, and then you lose the rest of it in four days or so. 

And that was only for ads that managed somehow to stand out in those top 10 lists. So, it’s only the top ads that survive from 4 to a handful of days. 

I bet you and I can’t remember a single freaking commercial from last year, right? And you and I both watched it with interest. 

If the half-life of a TV commercial during the Super Bowl is that short, then what’s the point of a Super Bowl commercial?”

Spike and sustain: The key to effective big-ticket advertising

AK: “The best way to make a Super Bowl ad effective is through ‘spike and sustain’ marketing.

Here’s how it works:

• First, you do a spike campaign to move your unaided brand awareness, purchase intent, or whatever KPI you’re solving for. You gotta move it up. So, if you were at 14 points before and after you’re at 16, then happy birthday. 
• Next, you need to spend money sustaining your marketing. So, you stay at 16. 

But, if you don’t do sustained marketing within one week, that 16 will fall back to 14, and that’s the impact of what is known as ‘spike and silence.’ 

If you spend money on your campaign and go silent, then that half-life is about 4 days. ‘Spike and silence’ is a very bad idea. ‘Spike and sustain’ is the way to go. 

If you’re executing a strategy that is ‘spike and sustain,’ then one of your spikes can be the Super Bowl. 

It’s like you’re always in the market; you’re always running these ads at high frequency, low frequency, high reach, low reach, whatever it is. 

The Super Bowl can be a part of your spike strategy. 

Right after the Super Bowl is done, you will have lots of sustained marketing in the marketplace, and that will ensure that any lift you get from that few hours of buzz from the Super Bowl can be sustained by the rest of your marketing. 

At my former employer, if you were going to spend roughly $6 to $10 million on a Super Bowl ad for the media, creative talent, and production costs, then you also needed to put another $20 to $30 million into sustained advertising in the weeks following the Super Bowl.

That was the only way to get the Super Bowl halo to last, right? Otherwise, it’ll disappear in hours. 

Nowadays, as a part of your ‘spike in sustain’ marketing strategy, the Super Bowl can be a spike. 

Likewise, ‘back to school’ can be a spike. Thanksgiving can be a spike. A new product launch can be a spike. 

If those are all spikes that you do in advertising to get higher reach, get back into the consciousness of a wider audience, then a Super Bowl ad makes sense. 

If you do not have sustained marketing before and after the Super Bowl, then usually the Super Bowl ad is an ego play. It’s a vanity spec, right? 

But remember, for every dollar you invest in a Super Bowl commercial, you’re going to have to invest $3 to $5 in sustained marketing for weeks after the Big Game. 

If you don’t do it, then you’re going to get a brand or sales lift for a few hours or a few days. But that’s about it. You’re not gonna drive long-term profits.”

How to measure advertising effectiveness

GJ: “That framework is perfectly clear. But, with a 30-second spot during the Big Game costing $8 million, how do you measure advertising effectiveness so you can answer questions like, ‘Are Super Bowl commercials worth it?’”

AK: “Do things really simple. Most of the time, there are two use cases:

• Performance.
• Brand.”

Measuring performance marketing campaigns

AK: “When I say Performance, I mean driving short-term sales, which could be for B2B, B2C, nonprofit, for-profit… 

If your Super Bowl commercial has:

• ‘Buy our product tomorrow.’ 
• ‘We’re offering a Super Bowl coupon.’ 
• ‘We’ve launched this brand new product.’ 
• Or anybody responding to the Super Bowl ad gets a free lifetime supply of diapers with their product. 

If you’re doing a Performance Super Bowl ad for short-term sales purposes, we will:

• Measure the sales that come from it within the first 48 hours. 
• Then, we’ll run some financial models to see if that performance, the sales that we got, lasted beyond 48 hours. 

But it is all based on short-term sales. This is easy to measure. 

If you could run a sophisticated Media Mix Model, you could include a simple analysis and your Google Analytics report the following month.

But if your commercial is performance-oriented – it’s giving a coupon, launching a new product, starting a new promotion, etc. – then it’s all based on sales. 

We will measure short-term sales instantly, online, offline, and everywhere.

For larger companies, we have models that will help us understand what it’s like a month later. 

We did see a 1% lift in sales compared to normal times, and we can attribute that to our Super Bowl commercial, right? 

It’s probably not going to last more than a few weeks, but you can measure it. That’s performance marketing. 

The purpose of your ad is to rush everybody to buy the new Doritos Locos Taco, which you launched at the Super Bowl.”

Measuring brand marketing campaigns

AK: “The second use case, which is a brand advertisement, is a bit more complex. 

Remember the days when Budweiser would run four or five commercials? 

They’re not trying to drive short-term sales. Sure, maybe a few more people will buy Budweiser, but those gorgeous horses pulling the beer are meant to evoke something about the brand. 

It’s solving a longer-term problem.

If you and I were at Budweiser today, we might be trying to overcome the slump in sales for Budweiser over the last year… 

We’re trying to get people to reposition Budweiser back to the working man’s everyday, affordable beer with horses and good American feelings. 

This is a very good example of brand marketing.

A whole lot of commercials for B2B companies like Salesforce are grand commercials. There is no intent to drive only short-term sales. 

We measure two different things for those, and that’s when ‘spike and sustain’ is particularly important.

First, we’ll look at the brand outcomes from the Super Bowl. We’ll measure four important metrics:

• Percentage brand lift.
• Number of people lifted. 
• Cost per individual lifted. 
• Long-term impact on sales.

A lot of these commercials are trying to move the metric unaided brand awareness. 

It’s not brand awareness or aided brand awareness. Those are crappy metrics. 

Unaided brand awareness is the good metric. 

Usually, they try to move unaided brand awareness to get more Americans who usually don’t know us to get them to remember our brands. 

So, we’ll measure the percentage of lifts, the number of people lifted, and the cost per individual lifted.

What does that mean? 

For a Super Bowl commercial, it means how many points of unaided brand awareness were lifted over the next week. 

Now, let’s say we got two points, three points, or whatever it was. OK, great. 

How many people did we lift? How many people are going to remember a brand? 

If it was 300,000, even though over 100 million people watched the Super Bowl, that would be OK. 

Fine, 300,000. What was the cost per individual lifted? 

How much did it take to influence Greg, who is just one of the 300,000? 

You take your Super Bowl budget, divide it by 300,000, and get the cost per individual lifted.

It’ll say, wow, it costs us $6 to get Greg to remember us for a few days now. 

You can see, was it worth it? But we measure brand impact and then keep tracking it over time, so that’s the brand play.” 

Brand impact vs. sales impact

AK: “The dimension that we will measure first is the short-term impact of a brand ad; we measure those three metrics. 

Then comes the idea of a lagging sales effect from great brand marketing. 

You will measure this by the incremental sales driven and the cost per incremental sale from running the Super Bowl ad. 

Remember that’s the second tranche of measurement you will do. And this is where ‘spike and sustain’ is very important. 

Because if you did spike and silence, at best, if Jesus and Krishna are supporting you together, you will get some brand lift. 

In those three metrics, I mentioned, if you do ‘spike and silence,’ you will see zero impact on performance metrics like incremental sales or cost per incremental sale. 

But if you do ‘spike and sustain’ pitches and spend 3 to 5 additional dollars following the Super Bowl for every dollar you spend on the Super Bowl ad, you will also see a lift in sales, a drop in cost per sale, and a lift in incremental sales.

And you will see that for B2B companies, nonprofits, beer, cars, insurance, and everything else advertising on Super Bowls.”

Final takeaway: Is a Super Bowl Ad worth it?

As Kaushik explains, Super Bowl ads can be effective, but their impact is short-lived unless supported by sustained marketing. 

Measuring their success depends on the ad’s objective:

• Performance ads focus on short-term sales and are easy to track using immediate sales data and financial models.
• Brand ads aim to build long-term awareness and should be measured in two steps: first by evaluating brand lift (percentage lift, number of people lifted, and cost per person lifted), then by tracking the ad’s long-term impact on sales.

As Kaushik says, “Don’t judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree.”

Brand ads shouldn’t be evaluated purely on short-term sales. Instead, they require a different measurement approach to assess their true value.

The key takeaway?

A Super Bowl ad works if it’s part of a larger “spike and sustain” strategy. Otherwise, the buzz fades within days.

Dig deeper: Who won: Measuring the most effective Super Bowl 2024 Ads