The 2024 Super Bowl was the most streamed event ever. Before the game, the Innovid blog predicted an interactive TV spot on Paramount+ would be one of the Super Bowl’s big advertising winners.
And we were exactly right — according to this story in Adweek, “How Paramount and Innovid’s Interactive Super Bowl Ads Scored Big.”
Paramount+ used the unprecedented streaming audience of the Super Bowl to run interactive ads on Roku, Fire TV, Android TV, and Apple TV devices, promoting content such as “Halo,” “The Chi,” and “Fire Country.” Using their remotes, viewers could engage with interactive overlays on the screen to add the advertised content to their personalized watchlists. The interactive ads delivered strong performance with an engagement rate 6% higher than Innovid benchmarks.
“The ‘Add-to-Watchlist’ has never been done before, and to do an experiment in the largest streamed event ever was something that we were really pleased to do,” Dave Helmreich, Innovid’s CCO, told Adweek’s Bill Bradley. “That engagement, 6% higher than anything we’ve ever seen before, was a testament to the fact that it works, and it works well.”
Adweek’s Bradley also quoted Paramount Advertising COO Steve Ellis in the story: “What’s better than the Super Bowl? And what’s better than proving, as this example did, that we can even deliver above the many, many data points that Innovid has for engagement rates?
Paramount+ wasn’t the only brand leveraging interactive technology in its Super Bowl spots. In its “Here’s to Science” ad that ran on Paramount+ during the Super Bowl, Pfizer used a QR code to generate engagement with its “Let’s Outdo Cancer” website.
After performing on CTV’s biggest stage, interactive ads are anticipated to proliferate. Advertisers must take note of this trend. Not only because more sporting events and thus more eyeballs are moving to streaming platforms — but because CTV advertising offers advanced creative formats (such as interactive ads and dynamic creative optimization) that can boost engagement rates and drive outcomes.
Another sign of advanced creative’s expansion: Pluto TV will begin supporting Innovid interactive ads this month.
As Innovid’s Helmreich told Adweek: “It provides an opportunity to give advertisers the ability to engage with consumers, which then benefits Paramount+ and Pluto and those platforms, because they can show for brands, that there is increased engagement, there’s value and there’s interaction, and nothing’s better than having that happen in real time. We’re just starting, and that’s the fun part about it.”
