The Clickable Search Engine Marketing Blog

This year’s Super Bowl advertising extravaganza underscores that marketers are still pushing the envelope in digital to rise above the pack and maximize their investment in this iconic event.

Marketers’ ongoing adoption of YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, along with sophisticated brand websites, underscores that digital and social media have have become a ubiquitous force that can’t be ignored. Marketers must carefully orchestrate these expanding channels within their overall campaigns in order to drive customer acquisition, engagement and overall brand health.

With that, following are key trends Clickable surfaced during Super Bowl XLVI. 

Most Super Bowl Television Ads Viewable Online Prior To Big Game

Winning Advertisers On YouTube

• Most Popular Ads Overall: Among the most viewed ads overall on the Monday morning after Super Bowl Sunday were Acura’s “Transactions” with 15.5 million views; Honda’s “Matthew’s Day Off” with 12.4 million; Volkswagen’s “The Dog Strikes Back” with 5.2 million;  Audi’s “Vampire Party” with 4.8 million; and Chevrolet’s “2012” with 3.6 million. Fiat’s “Seduction”, which Clickable did not track before Super Bowl Sunday, had 3.5 million views.

The Facebook & Twitter Effect

• Out of all Super Bowl advertisers with Facebook pages, Coke was among the largest and most noticeable with 38.6 million fans. Between the Friday morning before the Super Bowl and the Monday morning after, Facebook.com/cocacola gained a sizable 308,000 fans, more than most advertiser pages, due in part to aggressive promotion from the television ads, including a redirect from Cokepolarbowl.com. Most other Facebook brand pages that Clickable tracked gained between 1,000 and 100,000 fans over the Super Bowl weekend.

• Twitter played an important role in this year’s Super Bowl television commercials. The majority of advertisers had their Twitter follower counts increase by a few hundred to a few thousand over the Super Bowl weekend. Interestingly, several ads heavily promoted hashtag keywords, as opposed to brand handles. Some opportunistic advertisers even purchased hashtag keywords against other Super Bowl advertisers. For example, GM and Chrysler purchased Audi’s #solongvampires in Twitter search in order to serve Promoted Tweets for their brands. GM, Best Buy and Hulu were among the brands to aggressively and defensively purchase Promoted Tweets against their own hashtags.

Ads Direct Traffic To Brand Websites And Social Networks

• According to the Clickable analysis, brand websites were the dominant online destination visibly integrated into Super Bowl television ads. Out of 90 ads and promos analyzed around the Super Bowl game, 60% included an owned website URL associated with the brand or campaign. A handful of ads included Facebook URLs, like Budweiser’s Facebook.com/budlight, GE’s Facebook.com/GEAppliances, and Samsung’s Facebook.com/samsungmobileusa. 

• Instead of actively promoting Twitter brand handles, approximately 10 ads promoted a Twitter hashtag, like Bud Light Platinum’s #makeitplatinum, Audi’s #solongvampires and Best Buy’s #betterway.  About 20% of ads included no visible online destination.

• If not the destination URL, Facebook and Twitter are usually highly integrated into brand websites. 

Notable Online Strategies

• Interestingly, many brands took advantage of their URLs to redirect traffic to multiple destinations over time. For example, Coke's Cokepolarbowl.com redirected visitors to a Facebook app, then to YouTube after the game. Pepsi also used its own custom URL to visibly direct traffic to Facebook with Pepsimax.com/facebook.

• Notably, E-Trade, a veteran dot-com Super Bowl advertiser, complemented its own URL with an analog phone number, 1-877-ETRADE-4. And for all the Internet pundits who’ve declared QR codes dead, GoDaddy included one.

• To further drive views of commericals after the game, Super Bowl advertisers -- like Coke, Samsung, Chevrolet, Century 21 and others -- purchased keywords related to the Super Bowl ads to appear in Google search and YouTube results listings.

Winning Teams Gain The Most Fans

• The New York Giants Facebook page had1.6 million fans the Friday before the Super Bowl, and it ended with 1.8 million the Monday after, a 9% increase. 

• Conversely, the New England Patriots had 3.1 million and ended with 3.2 million, a 3% increase.