How Paramount and Innovid’s Interactive Super Bowl Spots Scored Big

No offense to Patrick Mahomes, but interactive ads were the real MVP of the Super Bowl for Paramount and Innovid.

As part of their new global partnership, Paramount and ad-tech company Innovid are bringing interactive ads to both Paramount+ and Pluto TV to drive customer engagement on connected TVs, with the first Paramount+ spots airing during Super Bowl 58—the most-streamed Super Bowl ever.

For the inaugural campaign, Paramount+ ran its first-ever “Add to Watchlist” interactive ads to promote content including Ghosts, Halo, The Chi, Tracker, Fire Country, Family Stallone, Lioness, The Tiger’s Apprentice and Mission Impossible 7. Viewers streaming the game on the Paramount+ app on Roku, Fire TV, Android TV and Apple TV devices could engage with advanced creative overlays and use CTV remotes to instantly place the featured Paramount+ programs in their personalized watch lists. 

“What’s better than the Super Bowl?” Steve Ellis, COO of Paramount Advertising, told ADWEEK. “And what’s better than proving, as this example did, that we can even deliver above the many, many data points that Innovid has for engagement rates?”

Interactive ads have a 96% completion/watch-through rate, 3% higher than standard video, and a 5% higher lift vs. standard video, according to Dave Helmreich, CCO of Innovid. And as Ellis noted, Paramount+’s interactive ads outpaced expectations, coming in at 6% higher than Innovid’s benchmarks.

“The ‘Add to Watchlist’ has never been done before, and to do an experiment in the largest streamed event ever is something that we were really pleased to do,” Helmreich said. “That engagement, 6% higher than anything that we’ve ever seen before, was a testament to the fact that it works, and it works well.”

In addition to the Add to Watchlist spots, Pfizer also utilized new interactive capabilities, adding a QR code and overlay to its “Here’s to Science” ad airing on Paramount+, which drove viewers to the “Let’s Outdo Cancer” website. 

Meanwhile, Pluto TV will support Innovid interactive ads beginning in early March. In addition to shoppable QR codes, advertisers can create custom or templated interactive CTV ads utilizing overlays, branded canvases, galleries, TV2Mobile, trivia and more.

“It provides an opportunity to give advertisers the ability to engage with consumers, which then benefits Paramount+ and Pluto and those platforms, because they can show for brands, that there is increased engagement, there’s value and there’s interaction and nothing’s better than having that happen in real-time,” Helmreich said. “We’re just starting, and that’s the fun part about it.”

For Paramount Advertising, Ellis explained the success of the interactive ads shows how long-form, premium content can continue to engage consumers in the age of short-form, small-screen ads. The company will continue looking to innovate ahead of the TV upfront.

“We want to ensure that we offer as much genuine innovation going into the upfront, and areas around creativity, measurement and performance are very important to Paramount Advertising, where frankly, we have consistently led the charge in advanced advertising in the measurement options in ad-supported streaming,” Ellis said.

The company will look to showcase its offerings to clients at its upcoming intimate upfront gatherings, as it once again opted to skip out on the traditional upfront week.