The purpose of this paper is to quantify and qualify the commercials in the Super Bowl.
This study is a content analysis of the placement of popular music in Super Bowl advertisements over a ten-year period (2005-2014).
More than a quarter of the commercials analyzed contained popular music. Although the use of popular music in commercials vacillated from year to year, popular music was most often observed in the product category of beverages; the music treatment most often used was original vocals; and song lyrics were most often relevant to the narrative of the commercial, rather than the brand.
This study extends the growing body of Super Bowl advertising research to popular music in commercials and provides a benchmark for all future research in this area.
