The USA Today Super Bowl Ad Meter is an annual survey taken of television commercials by USA Today in a live poll during the telecast in the United States of the Super Bowl, the annual professional American football championship game of the National Football League. The survey, which started in 1989, uses a live response on a zero-to-ten scale (zero being the worst, ten the best) of focus groups based in McLean, Virginia, the newspaper headquarters and one (or more) site(s) around the country.
The Super Bowl became the must-see event for advertisers during the third quarter of the telecast of Super Bowl XVIII on CBS, when Apple Computer debuted a one-time-only advertisement for their Macintosh computer titled 1984, directed by Ridley Scott. As the Los Angeles Raiders routed the Washington Redskins, 38âÂÂ9, the Apple commercial, not the game, was the most-talked about item around water coolers the very next day. Since then, major advertisers have used the game, paying as much as seven figures (averaging over US $5 million for one 30-second slot ), excluding production expenses) to showcase their work and generate buzz that many people tune into television's biggest event of the year just to watch the commercials, not the actual game. For those reasons, USA Today started the Ad Meter, a poll that gives live responses per second of each commercial.
According to the newspaper, ads by rule are limited to those shown during the game. As of 2020, this was generally from opening kickoff through the fourth quarter 2-minute warning, and including halftime. Ads which are not eligible are house promotions, regional ads, pregame/postgame ads, ads that only run on digital platforms, and ads that run outside of the national network broadcast. A new element was added for 2012, as Facebook users and those logging onto the USA Today website were involved in a second survey that lasted until February 7 at 6:00 pm EST. The online element was added to the regular meter for 2013.