Editor’s note: Rachel Rodgers and Pedr Howard are SVPs, creative excellence at Ipsos. This is an edited version of an article that originally appeared under the title “These were the 8 best Super Bowl ads in 2023. Here’s why, according to hard data from Ipsos."

For many of us, the commercials are the highlight of the Super Bowl: Brands bring their A game (and their A++ budgets). This year we saw an avalanche of celebrities, references to movies and shows and musical hijacking, while tearjerkers and purpose-oriented ads were missing.

PopCorners was the leader of leaders, having the highest creative effectiveness measured out of the last three Super Bowls. 

Ipsos leveraged its depth and breadth to analyze the ads through both traditional and cutting-edge methods – from surveys to social listening to live communities. Ipsos combined four different data sources to provide a fast, agile and accurate look at the holistic performance of Super Bowl commercials:

This combination of approaches provides a more robust and nuanced picture of Super Bowl success, leading to the eight awards for the top-performing ads of Super Bowl LVII in 2023.

This ad merits a broad smile from the CFO of Frito-Lay this morning. The use of the Breaking Bad theme and characters hooked viewers early and kept them highly engaged throughout. This ad is very likely to keep people talking based on its outstanding social power, a good thing since it has the highest sales potential of any Super Bowl ad tested in the last three years, with a Creative Effect Index of 216 – far above the average of 70-130.

While celebrities abound in this year’s game, “Bennifer” stood out as a pair working on multiple levels to drive effectiveness for Dunkin’. Consumers recognized Ben as a legitimate Dunkin’ drinker thanks to constant paparazzi photos of him enjoying the brand. Jennifer Lopez’s inclusion tapped into both nostalgia an...