Do Super Bowl Ads Really Work?

I was never the type to really flip over the ads in the Super Bowl, in fact, I think some of them are stupid. Like most people, I felt even though it cost companies tons of money to advertise, they got it back in the long run. I was wrong. According to an article in USA Today, shares of the companies with the top-ranked Super Bowl advertisements fell in the first days of trading following the big game in each of the past four years, according to Ken Kim, chief financial strategist of Eqis Capital and co-author of the 2008 paper “A test of the representatives bias effect on stock prices: A study of Super Bowl commercial likeability.”

There's an old Nascar term, "Watch on Sunday, Buy on Monday," but I believe those days are long gone. Just because viewers watch an ad once or twice, does not mean they'll be buying the product. Not by a long shot.