at the University of Utah
Eccles Students Analyze What Makes a Super Bowl Ad Win
This year, brands spent $8 million for just 30 seconds of Super Bowl airtime. But what actually makes an ad effective? Is it the humor? The celebrity cameos? The emotional storytelling?
For the 95 students competing in this year’s Game Day Ad Analytics Case Competition, the answer was all in the data.
Hosted by the Information Systems Program at the David Eccles School of Business, the competition challenged 27 teams to break down real-time audience reactions to 59 Super Bowl commercials, using analytics to determine which ads truly resonated — and why.
Using tools like Python, R, Twitter API, Alteryx, Tableau, and DOMO, students analyzed over 120,000 tweets, uncovering insights into sentiment, engagement, and brand perception. Their goal? Turn data into marketing intelligence using the same kind of analysis that advertising agencies and brands use to measure success and refine future campaigns.
This wasn’t just a number-crunching exercise. Teams had to think like consultants, creating visually compelling reports, infographics, and presentations to make their findings clear, persuasive, and actionable.
This year’s competition was bigger than ever, with a panel of 20 industry professionals from top companies like JP Morgan, Southwest Airlines, Twilio, Alteryx, Layton Construction, and Ken Garff Automotive evaluating the teams. Judges looked for depth of analysis, storytelling, and real-world application, challenging students to connect their insights to business strategy.
For participants, this was more than just a chance to flex their data skills — it was an opportunity to gain hands-on experience in marketing analytics, data visualization, and business strategy.
Winning teams didn’t just take home cash prizes, they also landed interviews with competition sponsors, turning their hard work into real career opportunities.
As brands continue to invest in data-driven advertising, competitions like this are giving Eccles School students the skills to lead in marketing, analytics, and business intelligence.
As data continues to redefine how brands engage audiences, competitions like these prepare students to be leaders in the industry. The question now: Which brands truly won the Super Bowl? These students have the data to prove it.
“The Game Day Analytics Challenge provided an incredible hands-on experience in data analytics, allowing us to extract key insights from Super Bowl tweets using a variety of cutting-edge tools. Our workflow involved data collection via the Twitter API, followed by Python scripting for preprocessing, text analysis, and sentiment classification. We leveraged Alteryx for data wrangling and transformation. To create compelling visual stories, we used Tableau, PowerBI and DOMO for dashboards, as well as infographic design tools to present our findings effectively. This competition sharpened our ability to apply machine learning, natural language processing, and data visualization techniques to real-world marketing problems—an experience that is truly invaluable in today’s data-driven job market.” – Prachi Aswani
Congratulations to our 2025 Game Day Analytics Challenge participants!
Second Place
- Radhika Bhakta
- Spencer Brothers
- Amber Cash
- Tami Salvador Camas
