We Covered Halftime During The Big Game

A Look at the Data

posted 2/6/2012

The biggest audience in American TV history, 111 million viewers tuned into Superbowl XLVI. After our successful test last week during the Republican Presidential Debates, Heartbyte decided to measure the Halftime show. As you can probably guess, different types of people appreciated different parts about the broadcast. With the data we collected, we got an insightful look into how the Halftime show is built for a broad audience.

We’ll dive into the data in a minute, but first we want to show you some of the basic demographic information so you’ll get an idea of the makeup of our audience. We had about 50 people participate in this event.

Age
Gender

We pushed basic demographic questions (age and gender) as soon as Halftime started. Ages 18-25 made up the majority of our audience followed closely by the 35-44 year age group.

Heartbyte can push poll questions to the audience at any time in the broadcast. Typically we send questions during commercial breaks to help keep audiences engaged. An obvious question to ask was which team (if any) they supported. Unfortunately, most of our audience members were disappointed after the game as the Patriots were the heavy favorites.

Who are you rooting for?

We wanted to understand what kept the audience watching the event up until halftime, and then we could segment their approval data in more compelling ways. So, we simply asked. The results showed that while the game was the biggest reason to keep watching, the commercials played a huge role in keeping the audience entertained.

What has been the most interesting so far?

One of the most polarizing moments in the performance is described below, along with a clip.

18-25 year olds vs. 35-44

One of our most interesting observations was the difference amongst viewers of different ages on Madonna’s musical performance. Older categories of viewers held a preference for Madonna’s older song “Vogue” while the younger audience (18-25) favored guest appearances by more current pop artists. For example, at the beginning of the halftime show, when Madonna opened by displaying images iconic to her original 1990 album, younger viewers gave the images a low rating; conversely, the moment viewers saw LMFAO on the stage, younger viewers’ ratings improved. While Madonna is an international superstar by any measure, these ratings give us insight on what younger generations find interesting and relevant. Similarly, when Madonna closed the halftime show with “Like a Prayer”, one of her older songs, both younger and older viewers gave the performance high ratings, perhaps due to current pop star Cee-Lo’s cameo at the show

One of the most popular commercials that played last night was Clint Eastwood’s Chrysler ad. Surprisingly, males and females responded very differently to the ad. Check it out below.

Clint Eastwood - Detroit

If you’d like to watch the entire Halftime performance along with some interesting demographic approval data, you can check out the clip below:

Halftime Performance

Want to get in touch? Send an email to info@heartbyte.com. We’d love to hear from you. If you’d like to be included in future testing, simply fill out the form up here!

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