A chilling new Halloween 2024 ad from Six Flags featuring a creepy clown terrorising a group of housemates is the scariest ad of all time, according to an AI ranking by DAIVID.
Ahead of Fright Night, the global creative effectiveness platform – which helps advertisers measure and improve the effectiveness of their content – used its AI-powered tool, DAIVID Self-Serve, to find the spookiest ads ever. Ads featured in the list include campaigns that were banned from YouTube and TV for being ‘too shocking’ and ‘distressing’.
Trained using tens of millions of human responses to ads, the new platform predicts the emotions an ad will generate, and its likely impact on brand and business metrics – enabling advertisers to measure the effectiveness of their ad campaigns at scale.
Six Flags’ “Tick,Tick,Tick” – released earlier this month and part of the theme park company’s annual “Fear Is Waiting” campaign – finished top of DAIVID’s terrifying top 10 after generating six times more intense feelings of fear than the average ad. It also generated nine times more intense feelings of horror and is 266% more likely to make people feel intense anxiety.
That put it ahead of Uber Eats’ 2022 ad “Don’t Run Out”, which warns about the dangers of running out of treats on Halloween night, and another Fright Night ad released earlier this month from Clash Royale “The Royale Curse” in second and third respectively. A 2017 ad from Skittles featuring an office worker who becomes trapped on a mysterious elevator floor and Burger King’s “Scary Clown Night” make up the rest of the top 5.
Other spots to appear in DAIVID’s ranking of the top 10 ads most likely to leave people quivering behind their sofas include Dirt Devil’s scary spoof of the movie The Exorcist and Sony Playstation’s creepy 2006 ad “Baby”. Ads to just miss out on terrifying top 10 include an ad for UK theme park Alton Towers and a chiling UK PSA from the 1970s warning of the dangers of children playing near water.
Top 10 Most Terrifying Ads - chosen by AI
| Rank | Campaign | Year launched | % of viewers likely to feel intense fear |
| 1. | Six Flags: “Tick,Tick,Tick” | 2024 | 19.5% |
| 2. | Uber Eats: “Don’t Run Out” | 2022 | 13.2% |
| 3. | Clash Royale: “The Royale Curse” | 2024 | 10.5% |
| 4. | Skittles: “Floor 9.5” | 2017 | 7.0% |
| 5. | Burger King: “Scary Clown Night” | 2017 | 6.4% |
| =6. | Fragile Childhood: “Monsters” | 2012 | 6.3% |
| =6. | Phones 4U: “Little Girl” | 2011 | 6.3% |
| 8. | Dirt Devil: “The Exorcist” | 2011 | 6.1% |
| 9. | Audi: “R8 Spyder” | 2010 | 6.0% |
| 10. | PS3: “Baby” | 2006 | 5.9% |
Ian Forrester, CEO and founder of creative effectiveness platform DAIVID, said: “Watching this list of ads should come with its own health warning. We trained our AI to predict the strength of emotions an ad will elicit from viewers, and the brands in our top 10 certainly manage that – from all-out shock to plain creepiness. Six Flags’ new Halloween ad looks like something straight out of a horror movie, generating intense feelings of fear, horror and anxiety. Looks like even our AI model was spooked.”
DAIVID’s AI models are built by combining facial coding, eye tracking and survey data with computer vision and computer listening APIs, enabling advertisers to evaluate, quantify and improve the effectiveness of their creative at scale without the need for audience panels.
Methodology
DAIVID’s research was conducted using the company’s Self-Serve solution, which uses a model – trained using tens of millions of consumer data points – to predict the emotions evoked by an ad, how much attention it’s likely to generate and its expected impact on various brand and business metrics. Using a combination of computer vision, computer listening, facial coding, eye tracking, survey data and machine learning, DAIVID’s model enables advertisers to evaluate, quantify and improve the effectiveness of their creative at scale.
Altogether 73 ads were included in the study, including Halloween ads released this month. Ads were ranked based on the average percentage of viewers who felt intense feelings of fear (the extent to which an ad makes a viewer feel scared). The strength of emotions people feel are ranked from 1-10, with scores of 8-10 considered ‘intense’.
To find out more about DAIVID Self-Serve – available across multiple formats and channels – click here.
DAIVID is a global tech platform that enables advertisers to evaluate and improve the effectiveness of their creative at scale. In today's content-saturated, always-on world, DAIVID helps marketers cut through the noise. The UK-based company empowers brands, agencies and influencers to ditch the guesswork and measure the effectiveness of their content quickly and accurately across a range of different platforms, formats and channels. The platform’s team of data scientists then analyse the findings and provide advertisers with the insights and actions they need to optimise the emotional and business impact of their creative. Clients include EssenceMediacom, Omnicom and Snapchat.