Students in the College of Media & Communication formed a focus group to give Ad Meter specialized feedback on Super Bowl commercials.

Super Bowl commercials have become a form of social currency. 

Conversations spring up the morning after the big game over which advertisement was most clever, compelling or captivating. Some go viral for all the right reasons while others suffer an unfavorable reception. Then people go one with their day. Something new grabs their attention. The mental real estate brands pay up to $7 million for, goes elsewhere. 

However, a few rare ads sear themselves into our collective memory. Perhaps because of how superb they are, or, because they’re humorously disturbing.

Either way, we remember them. 

Why does this happen with some ads and not others? Brands get 30 to 60 seconds to impress. Some end up missing the mark while others go down in the advertising hall of fame. 

USA Today’s Ad Meter has been measuring the popularity and success of Super Bowl ads since 1989. It gauges consumers’ reactions to the most expensive television commercials of the year. 

If brands are spending millions of dollars, they want to measure performance. The Ad Meter has delivered this kind of useful feedback for years. 

Then in 2023, a university approached Rick Suter, senior content strategist at USA Today Sports Media Group, and asked to collaborate on a small, student-led version of USA Today’s Ad Meter. 

Suter quickly recognized an opportunity. 

“It was a great experience,” Suter said. “The students had great feedback and were very honest. That got me thinking how we could include college students moving forward.” 

Doing this would offer students hands-on learning outside the classroom, but Suter also knew the students provided an advantage to the brands. 

“Everyone’s trying to obtain the secret of advertising to Gen Z,” Suter said. 

To those in the advertising game, cracking the Gen Z code can feel like making contact with a mythical people, Suter joked.

So, in 2024, Ad Meter rolled out its marketing spotlight program. In its first year, five universities participated. This year, that number grew to 13, including Texas Tech University. 

Suter’s colleague, Lindsey Dunahoo, is a Texas Tech alumna. She earned her Bachelor of Business Administration with a minor in public relations in 2016. When she learned about the spotlight program, she encouraged Suter to consider students from Texas Tech’s College of Media & Communication for the 2025 cohort. 

Dunahoo had taken a course with Associate Professor of Practice Jody Roginson, who left a lasting impression. Roginson was one of Dunahoo’s favorite professors during her time as a student, so she put Suter in touch with the instructor.  

“Rick is a total pro,” Roginson said. “He was so helpful as I tried to figure out how this opportunity could best fit our graduate and undergraduate students. He was patient with our questions, he was approachable, and he was supportive throughout the weeks leading up to and during our event.” 

Roginson opened up the opportunity to students in her graduate Strategic Communications in Sports course, as well as undergraduates who are part of Texas Tech’s Bullet Ad Team. Participation was not mandatory, but she explained the benefits of having an experience like this on a resume.  

“Partnerships that include live experiences like this allow students to link concepts from a class or textbook to the real world in ways that tend to make learning stick,” Roginson said. “There are only a handful of schools who officially get to say they rated the commercials and we’re now one of them.”

The students who participated started by individually ranking all 57 commercials on Ad Meter. This gave them a chance to form their own opinions about the advertisements and submit the data to Ad Meter directly, as any other consumer would. 

Then came the focus group.

Roginson scheduled the focus group, and ordered plenty of pizza, so students could compile detailed feedback to give USA Today. 

The university-level focus groups were able to expand on why they ranked certain ads in the order they did – what hit and what missed.

Graduate student Nathan Karseno liked the ads with emotional stories that focused on the product, but said, “We also saw a lot of commercials that were trying too hard.” 

Karseno said, accounting for subjectivity, many brands use flashy colors and overdone messaging to try to reach Gen Z consumers.

“Maybe that’ll attract a toddler, but not us,” he said. 

Gen Z, those born between 1997 and 2012, indicate celebrity endorsements and the use of influencers are always a safe play. But contrary to popular belief, they believe simple is better. 

At least that’s what the Texas Tech focus group had to say. 

“There was actually more debate on ranking the worst ads than ranking the best,” Karseno said. “We more or less agreed on what worked.” 

Because, as with any artform, there are exceptions to every rule. 

Even though some of their bottom picks did include influencers and celebrities, they fell flat because the humor “flopped” or because there was confusion about what was being sold. Others were ranked low for their cringeworthy factors.

The students ranked a coffee creamer commercial as the least favorable of the night. 

“It greatly disturbed me,” noted Courtney White, a graduate student.

There were also similarities amongst the ads that did well. As someone who’s seen many ads over the years, Suter said certain qualities always hit home.

“A good story is a good story,” he said. “It will work in any era.”

The students shared their feedback with Suter and his team, who in turn, shared it with the brands that advertised in this year’s Super Bowl LIX, which had the highest viewership in history. 

“Historically, the average is 115 million viewers,” Suter said. “This year had 128 million. Even the halftime show broke Michael Jackson’s record from 1993.”

Suter said many brands use the Super Bowl as a jumping off place for longer campaigns. The feedback they receive from students can help steer the effectiveness of the campaign going forward. He was especially inspired by the feedback Texas Tech provided. 

“The insights they provided were so perfect,” he said. “Sometimes students will just say, ‘I liked this, it made me laugh,’ but the students at Texas Tech took it to the next level and explained why. They produced a real analysis that had a professional zing.”

Students were similarly inspired by the experience. 

“It was incredible,” Karseno said. “The debates we had were spirited and it was really rewarding.”

Karseno plans to work in the sports media landscape after graduating with his master’s degree in mass communications. He’s open to that being in radio, print or broadcast, whatever opens for him. 

He says Texas Tech has allowed him to get his feet wet with real world opportunities he may encounter.

“I’m usually on the inside of a sporting event, not consuming it,” he said. “This was a good experience to see things from a viewer’s perspective and think through what different messaging conveys. All of that is part of the sports production, it’s all part of the experience.” 

And while Karseno laughed through a few ill-fated ads, he now feels ready to be taken seriously in a professional setting. 

“Watching our students articulate their strategic thoughts in a persuasive way with the authentic passion they had for the task, provided an incredible reinforcement of their own deep understanding of concepts,” Roginson said. “That’s equally rewarding for them to feel and their instructors to witness.” 

USA Today published Texas Tech’s findings earlier this month.