Social Sights

Measuring the Social Super Bowl

The Super Bowl has come and gone, but the online interactions around the brands that paid up to $3 million for each :30 ad spot is still going strong… well, for some brands. Many advertisers this year stated that their main goal was to convert TV viewers into online users engaged with their brand. Here at Networked Insights, we wanted to see how well each brand succeeded in doing that, and used our ability to measure the social to calculate the “Social ROI” that each brand saw from their Super Bowl ad spend, and determine the winners and losers.

To do this, we determined the increase in online interactions once the brands’ Super Bowl ads had aired by comparing the average daily conversations before and after the Super Bowl. We then determined, based on each brand’s total ad spend, what percentage growth each one saw per $1 million dollars spent. This allowed us to have an apples to apples comparison between brands.

The results were surprising, and begged the question for many brands whether their $3 million per 30 seconds of advertising was really worth it. Additionally, some clear trends emerged from the data we uncovered:

Overall, it was clear that the brands which came out on top had timely, relevant and targeted messages that resonated with the audience:

• Teleflora: Tops the list of winners due to the brands association with Valentine’s Day
• Cash4Gold: Came in second and capitalized on the down economy, marketing a way for people to put extra cash in their pockets. This in combination with cameos by MC Hammer and Ed McMahon contributed to the strong online engagement
• CareerBuilder.com: Also in the top three due to the increased focus on the country’s growing unemployment and the number of people that could relate to the “It May Be Time” commercial content
• H&R Block: In sixth place - as tax season approaches, Americans are far more concerned with their finances than ever before

On the flip side, brands that did not perform well were mostly the big brands that did not address specific and timely needs of the audience:

• Audi and Toyota: In a down economy, buying automobiles is not a high priority for most Americans, and this showed in both brands’ lack of Social ROI
• GE: A creative ad could not generate buzz for this massive brand that most consumers are indifferent to

To give you a bit more of a visual representation of the winners and losers, the following chart shows the logos of each brand and represents the Social ROI of their Super Bowl commercial based on the size of the logo — a “Social ROI cloud,” if you will.

It has been an eye opening Super Bowl for advertisers. The big, traditional advertisers are no longer getting the return they expect from the massive Super Bowl audience and more niche players are seeing better results than they could expect. Whether online or off, it’s all about relevancy today and targeting the right audience at the right time. The Super Bowl is no different.

Earlier in the week, we also compiled a list of the top Super Bowl ads based on online engagement around each advertisemenet and compared our list to the USA Today Ad Meter, which is based on surveys of Super Bowl watchers. As with all of our previous Measuring the Social reports, there were huge discrepancies in the two lists, proving once again the difference between the online and offline audiences. Six ads on the Networked Insights list did not make the top 10 Ad Meter ads. Full results below:

To gather data, Networked Insights tapped more than 17,000 social media and social networking sites, which included 3.5 million conversation per day and over 120 million unique users, and analyzed all interactions and post content around the Super Bowl ads. The data represents all interactions that take place between online audiences, including posting, reading, listening, rating, sharing, linking and inviting.