Rank Tracker | Doritos Is Most Popular, But Chevrolet Is Super Bowl's Runaway Winner

Fans of the New York Giants and New England Patriots are likely spending most of today in hangovers of either glory or lament, respectively. But they are only a portion of over 100 million viewers who tuned in to the game last night. For many of the other viewers, however, football took a back seat to the annual slate of Super Bowl commercials.

The commercials have become so popular in recent years that USA Today annually produces a Super Bowl Ad Meter , which ranks the fans' favorite commercials according to viewer voting. There is currently a close race for the top spot, featuring Bud Light's beer-fetching rescue dog and both of Doritos' fan-made commercials . But being ranked funniest or most clever doesn't necessarily mean that a commercial will successfully sell the advertised product, and data reveals that Doritos and Bud Light, despite the buzz around their ads, are losing out this year.

In an attempt to better measure which commercials were most engaging to viewers, TiVo tracked active viewership throughout the game. The DVR manufacturer tracked roughly 42 thousand homes in order to rank the ten commercials with the highest viewership relative to the surrounding 15 minutes of air time, including rewound and re-watched footage.

Tara Maitra, TiVo's Vice President General Manager, Audience Research and Advertising Sales, says that TiVo's ability to measure viewership on a second-by-second basis makes the study far more reliable than other survey-based measurements. Similar to USA Today , TiVo found that Doritos' two commercials were very effective. They rank first ( "Man's Best Friend" ) and third ( "Sling Baby" ). But Bud Light doesn't make an appearance on the top-10 list, and second-place is held by MMs' "Just My Shell."

Maitra suggests that the success of Doritos and MMs is due, in large part, to an "element of surprise." The advantage, Maitra says, is thanks to "the top three [commercials] not being featured on Youtube prior to the game," unlike the seven commercials that fill out ranks 4-10. Maitra adds that the commercials' first-time airings had more viewers rewinding and re-watching them, as opposed to the ads that had already been viewed online throughout the preceding week.

Collective Intellect's Brand Tracker, discussed in my Friday post about Super Bowl advertising , takes a different angle to measuring a commercial's effectiveness: the Brand Tracker measures viewer reactions on social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter. Collective Intellect also found that Doritos and MMs had the funniest and most popular commercials. But the Brand Tracker's subcategory of "Purchase Language," which measures what share of viewers indicated an interest in buying the advertised product, reveals that funny doesn't always mean money.

Doritos, despite its two viewer-loved commercials, is ranked No. 10 in Purchase Language with a 2.7% share of viewers interested in buying the snack food. Bud Light didn't even crack the top-15. Chevrolet, on the other hand, dominated the subcategory with a commanding 32.2% share of viewers using purchase-focused language in responses to the American automaker's four Super Bowl commercials. The data reveals that, as marketing expert Mark Stevens told me last week , buzz does not always generate increased sales.

The distinction is an important one, and the real winners of the Super Bowl are those who can turn a marketing investment into profit on the balance sheet. So while Doritos may garner Youtube hits and internet chatter, Chevrolet is driving away with a trunk full of riches.

Note: All figures from Collective Intellect's Brand Tracker are as of 2:30PM.