What has made this commercial a break through for its time? It was the first cinematic super bowl ad It was the birth of apple One of the most expensive ads in television history at $900,000 It didn’t even display the product in the ad The ad was never broadcast again

A University of Tampa professor is questioning the value of Super Bowl ads.University of Tampa A 30-second spot costs as much as $3 million for Super Bowl XLIII, the costliest ad ever for the big game. A recent study suggests that it might not be worth it. In the study, Stephen Blessing, assistant professor of psychology at UT, and Lisa Haverty, owner of the Boston advertising consulting firm Brain on Brand, used a scoring model, CogScore, to predict which commercials shown during the 2006 Super Bowl viewers would best remember.

A year after the big game, Blessing surveyed a group of undergraduates about what they remembered of the ads. He found that viewers seldom made a definitive connection between the commercials and the product being sold. While an advertisement may be particularly funny or strike some other emotional chord, viewers frequently misidentified the exact product that each ad was promoting, or the specific brand.

“Advertisers need to link their product to the viewer’s existing memory structures, as well as promote new links, if viewers are going to be influenced toward purchasing the marketed product,” Blessing said. Blessing and Haverty are following up their first results with a study based on the commercials from last year’s Super Bowl XLII (the New York Giants versus the New England Patriots). Initial findings are similar to the past study: the CogScore model effectively predicts which brands people will remember.New York Giants New England Patriots

Why does the professor think the ads might be a waste of money? How do you determine if an advertisement is successful or not? What method did the professor use to come to his conclusion?

Come up with your own method of determining the success of an ad Think about what is in a successful ad and how you could measure that You will have 10 minutes to come up with your own method Use the brainstorming bubble provided to come up with ideas Get in groups of 3-4 and share your ideas. You will need to pick a spokesperson.