Google's Super Bowl Ad: A Reality Check

#TalkNerdyToMeLover's According to Adam

For the first time ever, Google was one of the companies paying in the $2.5M range for a Super Bowl commercial. The ad had no people, no cartoons, no monkeys and no talking babies, but it was definitely eye catching. But was it real? Well, let's find out.

The first thing that gets typed into the search box is the letter s. The top two suggestions in the ad (image on left) are the same as you get in real life (southwest airlines and sears), but in the ad, the next two suggestions are swine flu related. Swine flu concerns have decreased in recent months, so skype has moved back into the #3 spot (image on right), and none of the 10 suggestions for "s" are swine flu related.

As you can see, the search results for "study abroad paris france" look pretty different. The ad doesn't show any sponsored link, and hides the extra results from studyabroad.com.

At 0:12, the ad shows "translate tu" being typed into the search box. However, the drop down suggestions already assume the space after "tu", resulting in major differences between the ad's suggestions and real life. 

Between the time the ad was "filmed" and the time it ran, there are apparently 3,000,000 more results for "chocolate shops paris france". Otherwise, the ad is pretty accurate, including the real phone numbers for the shops that appear. 

Here's a case of Google selling itself short. In the ad, when "what are tru" is typed in, the user gets a standard suggestion box. In real life, you get enhanced suggestions, with a definition of "truffle". 

Side-by-side, these are pretty close, save for the real search leading with "chuck" (likely due to that show's return to the airwaves). I mainly just wanted to include this because Chuck Norris was in a Super Bowl ad (even if it was just his name). 

The same church shows up as the top result in both the ad and in real life, and the phone numbers are the same. But the next couple results don't come close to matching. 

And now we're at the last search of the ad. When the ad ran last night, the people at the Super Bowl party I was at started making jokes, saying "that's not what comes up when I type 'how' into Google", but apparently they've actually done a pretty good job sanitizing their search suggestions. Sure, it's less fun, but it does prove the ad is accurate. 

Check out the ad in its entirety here:

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