It’s a family affair among the top technology brands this year.

Google snaps up the Software & Websites top spot for the third consecutive year just ahead of sibling Android which earned the second highest average Ace Score. Amazon Fire HD is the top performer among the coveted Mobile Device category with its parent Amazon leading the Retail category. Microsoft’s Xbox Games portfolio earned the behemoth this year’s Video Games & Consoles honor and while the Hardware category debuted too few ads in 2015 to officially qualify for the line up, Microsoft also earned the highest average Ace Score among hardware competitors.

Brand of the Year honors are awarded to brands earning the highest average Ace Score for their 2015 body of work. See qualifications below.

Brand of the Year: Software & Websites

Google earns its third consecutive Brand of the Year award with the largest gap to norm of any qualified brand in 2015 based on a body of work that together earned an average Ace Score of 612, 20 percent above the Software & Website category norm.

Google’s ads tend to be powered by Relevance, with 5 of the top 6 highest Relevance scores in the category. Google’s top performing ad of the year “Keep Questioning” earned the highest scores among Software and Website ads in both Relevance and Desire.

Sister-brand Android followed closely with the second highest gap to norm (16 percent) of all 2015 qualified brands and an average Ace Score of 588. The two brands also represent 8 of the top ten highest scoring ads of the category (Google, 5 ads; Android 3 ads).

While we closed the dataset for Brand of the Year portfolios on 12/10, it’s worth noting that Google’s annual “Year in Search” for 2015, introduce online on 12/15 earned the highest score for the brand’s body of work with an Ace Score of 659.

Android’s “Translation” earned the highest percentage above category norm of any ad to debut in 2015 (Ace Score 675, 32.6 percent above 12 month category norm).

Android dominates in terms of Breakthrough components, securing the top 3 spots in terms of both Attention and Likeability metrics. Below are a sample of the ads for these two top performing brands.

Top Performing Google and Android Ads of 2015

ad title	brand	category	air date	score(s)
Keep Questioning	Google	Software & Websites	05.04.2015	654
Question	Google	Software & Websites	06.10.2015	643
Breakfast	Google	Software & Websites	10.13.2015	626
Translation	Android	Software & Websites	09.01.2015	675
Peaceful Co-Existence	Android	Software & Websites	02.05.2015	647
Togetherness	Android	Software & Websites	02.14.2015	593

Brand of the Year: Mobile Devices

The brand formerly known as Kindle (a 2013 Brand of the Year winner), Amazon Fire HD earns the top spot for the highly coveted Mobile Devices category, deriving its power from Desire and Information components.
The Amazon Fire HD ad portfolio focused on the durability of its latest tablet. Its top-performing ad “Twice Durable” earned an Ace Score of 671, 21.2 percent above the 12-month category norm and earned the highest Desire (669) and Information (718) of all ads in the category. Across the portfolio of ads, respondents consistently identified “the product itself” as the best thing by an average of 32 percent.

Samsung Mobile Phones is due strong honorable mention however, considering the brand earned the second highest average Ace Score among qualified Mobile Device brands (589, 6% above category norm) with a whopping 38 new pieces of creative – 20 ads within the top 25 in the category.

The competition has thinned among mobile device brands this year. HTC released far fewer ads in 2015 vs 2014 dropping our qualified competitors down to just four. But, considering the spotlight that continuously shines on this category, we made an exception to the “5 competing brands” rule and included it among the analysis). Apple significantly increased their number of new ads with the introduction of the Watch, debuting more than 50 unique ads vs less than a dozen in 2014.

Top Performing Amazon Fire Ads of 2015

ad title	brand	category	air date	score(s)
Twice Durable	Amazon Fire	Mobile Devices	02.22.2015	671
March Madness	Amazon Fire HD	Mobile Devices	03.19.2015	578
It is Tough	Amazon Fire HD	Mobile Devices	05.03.2015	563

Brand of the Year: Video Games & Consoles

Microsoft earns the Brand of the Year for its Xbox video game ads for the third consecutive year. This year’s body of work featured a series of Xbox exclusive product introductions for Halo 5, Forza Motorsport, and Rise of the Tomb Raider. Microsoft used movie-like cinematography and intense story telling to lure the viewers into the premise of their latest games. Viewers rewarded the outstanding visuals with top decile breakthrough measures (Attention and Likeability), while consistently identifying the visual scenes as the single best thing about the ads – to the tune of 42 percent for “Discover,” a :90 cinematic journey alongside Lara Croft that earned the highest Ace Score for the brand (575, 10 percent above norm). Below is a sampling of Microsoft’s award winning portfolio of ads.

Top Performing Xbox Ads of 2015

ad title	brand	category	air date	score(s)
Discover	Xbox	Video Games & Consoles	06.02.2015	575
Racing Toward	Xbox	Video Games & Consoles	09.07.2015	571
A Hero Falls	Xbox	Video Games & Consoles	09.27.2015	569

Curious how the other Technology contenders like Apple, PlayStation, and new comers like Fitbit performed? With ~400 video ads just this year and 65 brands across the industry, there are many more stories to tell. Contact us to request a meeting.

Check out all of the Top Brands of the Year here.

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. 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.