ispotsuperbowl23
iSpot.tv’s Super Bowl Ad Center tracks response to commercials before, during and after the big game.

When we watch television, commercials provide a time to take a bathroom break or grab a quick bite to eat.

That just isn’t the case on Super Bowl Sunday, when companies spend millions of dollars on funny, outrageous and weird advertisements that typically dominate the water cooler discussions the following Monday.

ispottv1212But which commercials actually worked? Which brands had the highest engagement levels with viewers?

Bellevue-based iSpot.tv has built the technology to find out. For the second straight year, the two-year old startup is running its Super Bowl Ad Center that crunches data to track real-time customer response and digital effectiveness of the advertisements before, during and after the big game.

The company, which raised $5 million from Madrona Venture Group and TL Ventures this past October, measures thousands of TV commercials and provides competitive intelligence to advertising agencies and cable networks. Its proprietary audio and video fingerprinting technologies automatically detects and extracts TV advertising in real-time.

The Super Bowl Ad Center, which also includes social media response data, tracks every single commercial during the big game, many of which have already been posted online — a stark contrast from advertising strategies in the past.

Budweiser's "Puppy Love" Super Bowl commercial has been a smashing success so far.
Budweiser’s “Puppy Love” Super Bowl commercial has been a smashing success so far.

“All the talk before the Super Bowl used to be only about the game and the teams,” said iSpot.tv CEO Sean Mulller, who noted that he’s seen 45 early-release ads. “That’s kind of been flipped around.”

Several companies have already shared their Super Bowl commercials on the Internet and iSpot.tv is tracking the response. Budweiser’s “Puppy Love,” ad is far and away the most popular based on response from viewers.

Muller, who joined us on the GeekWire podcast this week, said the Bud commercial has two ingredients for a great spot: animals and emotion.

“The puppy bonding with the Clydesdale really captured the emotion of people,” he said. “The amount social activity and views that this ad has gotten is unprecedented.”

Sean Muller in the GeekWire radio show studio.
Sean Muller in the GeekWire radio show studio.

About 35 percent of Super Bowl advertisers will use iSpot.tv’s dashboard to track consumer response to their ads compared to everyone else in real-time. Muller said his company’s ability to immediately provide real-time response information to customers is iSpot.tv’s secret sauce. 

“It’s a game-changer for the industry,” he said. “The TV advertising world is used to very slow data and we’ve shortened the lag time.”

iSpot.tv’s customers use the platform for three main reasons: to track ad performance, to figure out which networks and which times of day are most effective to advertise, and for competitive intelligence. Clients pay $120,000 a year to iSpot.tv to access data in a specific category.

We learned even more about the company during an interview with Muller on this week’s GeekWire radio show. Check back on GeekWire Saturday morning to hear our conversation —  broadcast details from the show are listed below:

kiroradioGeekWire airs on KIRO Radio in Seattle (97.3 FM) at 6 a.m. and 7 p.m. on Saturdays, except when pre-empted by live sports. The show runs every weekend on GeekWire.com. You can get every episode using this RSS feed, or by subscribing in iTunes. Also search for the show on Stitcher.

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