Toyota’s “Stand Together” Ad Wins USA TODAY Sports First Ever Rio Ad Meter Bracket

After two weeks of intense fan voting on the first-ever USA TODAY Sports Rio Ad Meter bracket competition sponsored by global digital marketing leader Adobe, Toyota’s commercial focused on the power of teamwork has been announced as the winner. The ad was favored over 31 of the most acclaimed ads from across the globe surrounding the Rio 2016 Games.

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Based at admeter.usatoday.com, over 145,000 votes were cast by fans in the marketing competition which featured a broad range of new ads from Coca-Cola, Procter & Gamble, Mini, Chobani, Dick’s Sporting Goods, Visa, DeVry, Under Armour, Gillette, Nissan, Omega, CitiBank, BMW, Samsung, Gatorade, Bridgestone, Ralph Lauren, USA Swimming and others featuring athletes including swimmers Michael Phelps and Katie Ledecky, gymnast Simone Biles, decathlete Ashton Eaton, soccer stars Neymar Jr. and Carli Lloyd among others.

“As we saw with Simone Biles, Katie Ledecky, Ashton Eaton and others, each Olympic Games introduces us to new heroes who are not only cheered for by consumers, but by brands who see opportunity in their personas in connecting with those consumers,” said Dave Morgan, president of USA TODAY Sports Media Group. “It’s both exciting and fascinating to see the consumer reaction to that creative collaboration between brand and hero, and we were thrilled to bring a new form of competition to the games to measure that reaction.”

USA TODAY Sports launched the first ever Rio Ad Meter Bracket, sponsored by Adobe, on August 12th . Leveraging Omnigon’s fan engagement product BracketPro, fans were able to view the head-to-head matchups, watch the commercials, and ultimately vote on their favorite ads as the competition went from 32 commercials down to 16, to eight, four, and the final two – Hershey’s “Hello From Home,” starring U.S. gymnastics gold medalist Simone Biles, and Toyota’s “Stand Together,” celebrating the power of teamwork.

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