We are thrilled to present the 2015 Brands of the Year– a coveted award due to its unique qualification. To earn the title of Brand of the Year is to have debuted a portfolio of television video ads in 2015 that in aggregate outperformed the portfolio of all category competitors.

These Brands achieved their titles through different creative strategies and drew their strength, generally speaking, from the “power” attribute noted. Meaning, the top performing ads by each brand achieved strong consumer reaction through their ability to grab and maintain attention, be likeable, draw from the product strength or relevance, evoke desire, or change the way consumers perceive the brand.

We scored more than 8,500 ads (so far) this year including television, digital and private iterative testing for our clients. Three hundred and eight brands qualified for Brand of the Year across 17 categories, representing over 5,600 creative executions.

Mercedes-Benz, LifeLock and Petco have maintained their crown from 2014, while Google, Longhorn, Reebok and Xbox are returning for the third consecutive year.  There’s a story behind each and every winner and while we cannot reveal all of the insights, we’ve provided a bit more color as to how each achieved their success.

Read More About the Winners

Want insights on another category? Just ask…

Here are the winners listed according to largest percent gap to its category norm. Click any brand or category to read more.

Brand of the Year Qualifications:

Ace Metrix scores every nationally airing television advertisement and the majority of digital video ads across 24 industries, 96 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, brands must have debuted five or more unique pieces of creative within a category containing more than 100 pieces of creative and five qualifying brands.Data is based on ads initially aired on television between January 1, 2015 and December 10, 2015, from data available through December 18, 2015.

Ace Metrix gathered more than 3.5 million responses, including nearly 2 million verbatim comments left optionally for the 6,500+ new television video ads in 2015. Each ad is scored against a unique panel of 500+ consumers, demographically balanced to the US census for age, gender and income. The Ace Score is the holistic measure of ad creative impact and includes data on attributes such as Persuasion, Likeability, Information, Attention, Change, Relevance, Desire and Watchability. Hundreds of qualitative consumer verbatim responses are collected for each ad and inform additional measures such as the Emotional Sentiment Index.