Ace Metrix Releases the 2013 Brand of the Year Watch List

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Ace Metrix®, the new standard in television and video advertising analytics, today announced the 2013 Brand of the Year Watch List, a compilation of the top performing TV brand advertisers across 20 of the year’s most competitive categories. Brands that appear on this list have earned the highest average Ace Score within their category based on their 2013 portfolio of work to date. With just over a month remaining in the year, these brands are the current candidates for the Brand of the Year distinction, a celebration of creative excellence.

“The Brand of the Year Watch List provides an early look at the brands that lead their category,” said Peter Daboll, CEO of Ace Metrix. “It is one thing to make a great ad; it is another thing entirely to create a year’s worth of great creative. What’s especially exciting in the 2013 list is the number of new brands that have consistently distinguished their advertising, often against stiff category competition, to emerge at the top of their category.”

2013 Brand of the Year Watch List by Category – brands listed alphabetically
Category	Brands
Apparel & Footwear	Adidas	Nike	Reebok	Skechers	Wrangler
Auto - Luxury	BMW	Buick	Hyundai	Jaguar	Mercedes-Benz
Auto - Non-Luxury	Ford	Jeep	Kia	Mazda	Mitsubishi
Beverages - Beer	Black Crown	Budweiser	Coors Light	Guinness	Samuel Adams
Beverages – Non-Alcoholic	Coffee-Mate	Dunkin' Donuts Coffee & Tea	Gatorade	International Delight	Lipton
Beverages - Spirits	Bacardi	Crown Royal	Jack Daniel's	Smirnoff	Southern Comfort
Candies & Snacks	Hershey's	Oreo	Orville Redenbacher's	Pepperidge Farm	Reese's
Financial Services Banking, Investment & Mortgage	Citibank	Fidelity	JP Morgan Chase	TD Ameritrade	Wells Fargo
Household	Bounty	Dawn	Febreze	Lysol Cleaners	Swiffer
Insurance	Aflac	Allstate	Farmers	Nationwide	State Farm
Packaged Foods	Campbell's	Hidden Valley	Marie Callender's	Oscar Mayer	Smucker's
Personal Care	Colgate	Crest	Dove Soap	Dr. Scholl's	Oral-B
Restaurants - Casual Dining	IHOP	Longhorn Steakhouse	Olive Garden	Red Lobster	TGI Friday's
Restaurants - QSR	Baskin Robbins	Dairy Queen (Other QSR)	Domino's Pizza	Panera Bread	Pizza Hut
Retail	Best Buy	Hallmark	Home Depot	Petco	Walgreens
Technology - Hardware	Apple Hardware	Google Hardware	Microsoft Hardware	Samsung Hardware	Samsung Televisions
Technology - Mobile Devices	Apple iPhones	HTC	Kindle	Samsung Mobile Phones	Windows Phone
Technology - Software & Websites	Bing.com	Google	Microsoft Outlook	Microsoft Windows	Yahoo!
Technology - Video Games & Consoles	Playstation Software	Ubisoft Video Games	Warner Brothers Video Games	Xbox Hardware	Xbox Software
Telecom Services	AT&T Wireless	Hulu	Netflix	Verizon FiOS	Verizon Wireless
To qualify for Ace Metrix Brand of the Year, a brand must have debuted five or more unique pieces of creative within a category or industry containing more than 80 pieces of creative and five qualifying brands as of November 6, 2013. The top 5 brands to date for each of the 20 Brand of the Year categories are represented above. Ace Metrix will reveal the final Brand of the Year winners for each category on January 7, 2014, once all ads for 2013 have been scored.

This year’s list boasts a significant number of new brands with only seven of the 2012 Brand of the Year winners making the watch list. Listed below are insights for a few of the categories. Visit acemetrix.com for more complete coverage.

Automotive

Hyundai revved up its advertising to earn a first time spot on the Lux Auto list, while sibling Kia made a first time appearance on the Non-Luxury list. Luxury American car brands struggled to compete with foreign-bred car ads with Buick representing the only domestic contender in that category. On the Non-Lux Auto side, however, 2012 Brand of the Year Winner Ford appears alongside Jeep for the Americans while Mazda, Mitsubishi and Kia round out the table.

Beverages

Furthering a trend that appeared in 2012, soda brands are noticeably absent from the list. In addition, while last year’s list saw category leaders in juice brands (Ocean Spray and Tropicana), these have given way to caffeinated drinks. Coffee-mate, Dunkin’ Donuts Coffee and Tea, International Delight and Lipton join Gatorade on the Watch List in this highly competitive category.

Unlike 2012, big beer makes a bit of a comeback in 2013 with Anheuser-Busch, MillerCoors and Diageo (Guinness) joining macro-brewery Boston Beer Company on the Watch List.

Financial

Economically, we see consumers’ attitudes towards big banks thawing, with the appearance of Wells Fargo, JP Morgan Chase and Citibank on the list of contenders for the top spot in Financial Services - Banking, Investment & Mortgage.

Restaurants

Panera joins the ranks of the top brands for Quick Service Restaurants (QSR) after investing more heavily in ad creative around their expanding menu and core values.

2012 Brand of the Year Winner Olive Garden is in familiar company with the exception of TGI Friday’s who, like Panera, was not a qualified contestant in the past but increased their creative units to secure a spot among these casual dining brands.

Technology Brands in Good Company… Their Own

There are many stablemates among the technology lists: Apple and Samsung, known for battling it out throughout the year, each hold spots on both of the Hardware and Mobile Devices lists for their tablets and phones. Samsung is also a contender for its television brand.

Microsoft finds itself competing among its brethren in several tech categories. Microsoft Outlook, Microsoft Windows and Bing are all on the Software and Websites list while Microsoft Hardware goes head-to-head with Apple, Google and the Samsungs for the Technology Hardware category. Among Video Games and Consoles, Microsoft again shares the race with Xbox Software and Xbox Hardware.

In Telecom Services, Verizon has two contenders in the race with FiOS and Wireless services duking it out against AT&T and newcomers Netflix and Hulu, the latter of which may be a sign of the content services revolution.

Brand of the Year Qualifications

Ace Metrix scores every nationally airing television advertisement across 23 industries, 85 categories and is therefore uniquely qualified to report a brand’s overall effectiveness across the entire video advertising industry’s body of work over a year, as well as year-over-year. To qualify for Ace Metrix Brand of the Year Watch List, brands must have debuted five or more unique pieces of creative within an industry containing more than 80 pieces of creative and five qualifying brands. The top 5 brands to date for each of the 20 categories can be found at www.acemetrix.com/news. Ace Metrix will reveal the final Brand of the Year winners in the first week of January once all ads for 2013 have been scored.

About Ace Metrix

Ace Metrix® is the new standard in television and video analytics, dedicated to delivering better, faster and more cost-effective solutions for evaluating video advertising within competitive context. Through the Ace Metrix LIVE® platform, companies can now access timely, actionable data wherever, whenever they need to, enabling real-time advertising campaign optimization. Combining leading edge technology and patent pending methodology, Ace Metrix is revolutionizing the way marketers measure themselves and their competitive landscape. The Company is privately held and is backed by leading venture capital firms and industry leaders including Hummer Winblad Venture Partners, Palomar Ventures, Leapfrog Ventures and WPP.

Follow Ace Metrix on Twitter for sustained insight: @Ace_Metrix.

Note: Ace Metrix®, the Ace Metrix logo design, Ace Score®, Ace Metrix LIVE® and Creative Lifecycle Management® are registered trademarks of Ace Metrix. Other trademarks are property of their respective owners.