Just before the Super Bowl I proclaimed that if the Crash the Super Bowl ad didn’t win 1st place in the USA Today Ad Meter poll, I’d eat a tin can.  Well, Goat 4 Sale did air during the game but it came in 7th.  I was going to keep my word and eat a tin can but my doctor gave me a note saying I didn’t have to do it because I guess eating metal will kill you.  Apparently it will also kill a goat.  My doctor explained that goats got the reputation as can-eaters because they are sometimes seen eating the paper labels off of old cans.  So my doctor gave me a Campbell’s soup label and he made me eat it in front of him.  My doctor’s a dick.

As I explained in my previous post, the results of this year’s ad meter totally took me by surprise.  I knew that USA Today was going to “open it up to the public” but I could have sworn that they were also doing their traditional focus group thing.  But nope, public votes alone determined the results of this year’s poll.  And that pretty much explains why the results of this year’s poll were so ridiculous.  I’m positive that if USA Today had done focus group testing like they used to, at least one Doritos filmmaker would have made the Top 3.  Actually, if the ad meter hadn’t changed this year I’m pretty sure the results would have been pretty similar to Nielson’s Super Bowl ad survey.  Nielson released the results of that poll the other day and Goat 4 Sale was ranked the #1 most liked commercial of the game as well as the #1 most memorable commercial of the game.  Here’s Nielson’s full top 10:

This list makes a lot more sense than USA Today’s top 10.  Goat 4 Sale totally blew away the competition.  Here’s how Nielson got these numbers:

All Super Bowl ads were ranked on likability. The Likability Index was calculated by taking the likability score (percent of viewers who liked the ad) and indexing versus the mean likability score of all 2013 Super Bowl ads. For example, with a Likability Index of 221, the Doritos ad has proven to be 2.21 times as likable as the average 2013 Super Bowl ad.

Notes: The Top 10 lists are based on about 6,750 ad surveys of Super Bowl viewers; 67 unique national creative executions (excluding movie spots) during the game’s four quarters and halftime were considered for the list.

So in the USA Today poll, anybody from anywhere could vote on the ads.  They didn’t have to rate every commercial and a lot of people voted before the Doritos ads were even revealed.  In the Nielson survey, it sounds like the viewers were pre-screened and they had to vote on every single ad.  That’s the right way to do a poll like this.  Winning the Nielson survey is a major accomplishment and it’s a shame that there’s no bonus prize money for winning this poll.  Now that the old ad meter has been ruined, maybe next year FritoLay should dump USA Today and forge a new partnership with Nielson.