This year’s game may have been unusually thrilling, but the fact of the matter is that most people tune in to watch the Super Bowl for the ads (and an excuse to gorge on beer and chips). For this year’s event a number of groups tapped into Twitter to try to get a real-time perspective on how each ad fared. One of the more impressive reports was put together by SocialMedia, an advertising network that focuses on social networks. Their report, called the TweetBowl, plots the number of tweets relating to each commercial over time, allowing us to easily see which commercials were the most popular, and which had the most staying power.
It’s impossible to use the total number of tweets as a a direct measure of each brand’s success – some companies ran multiple commercials, while others had their videos more widely distributed so no single link got the most attention. But it’s still easy to spot some trends. For instance, it looks like this Bridgestone Tire ad had a relatively good initial response, with nearly 400 tweets in the five minutes after it aired. But the number of tweets surrounding the ad dropped precipitously only a few minutes later. In contrast, GoDaddy’s shower ad spiked at nearly 600 tweets immediately after its commercial aired, with a relatively high number of tweets continuing for at least the next 30 minutes.
The SocialMedia report claims that Hulu ultimately won the TweetBowl, though it didn’t even come close to having the most number of Tweets:
So, why hulu? They didn’t have the most tweets. But they also didn’t have seven commercials. And, not only was their commercial great, hulu.com/superbowl was the #1 shared link across all companies by a large margin. So, combining what was arguably the best commercial, ownership of the most frequently shared link, and the fact that they serve up all the other commercials in addition to their own makes Hulu a pretty easy choice for champion.
This doesn’t seem quite fair to me – Hulu had the number one shared link because it was streaming all of the Super Bowl ads (which even had their own ads). But even if we are comparing apples to oranges, Hulu clearly had a big day – another survey called the Twitter Bowl (details here) ranked Hulu as the second best ad, narrowly missing the top spot after getting edged out by Transformers.
Lets wait and see if hulu.com rates the hulu ad as the #1 superbowl commercial. They (hulu) have a voting system, and I’m curious to see what the outcome will be.
Wow, this report was a smart concept. Many companies could use this as a model for their future commercials.
Of course, the one thing you need to keep in mind here is that the vast majority (and I mean, VAST) of people who would use Twitter are not real sport fans. The Super Bowl certainly bridges the gap, and is often the one event of the year where non-sports fans actually sit in front of a sporting event for a few hours.
But any conclusion that says “people watch the Super Bowl for the ads, because that’s what they’re tweeting about” is a bit flawed.
careerbuilder and doritos and pepsi had the best ads to me . but careerbuilder was the best
You have got to be kidding me. The number of tweets can be used to determine an ads success? Not true unless you only want the opinions of nerds without a life, or virtual soapboxers who pray that dorks will follow them.
Also, is there any determination of what is a ‘positive’ tweet and a ‘negative’ tweet? What if 500 people all twittered about how much a commercial sucked and how they would never buy that product? It seems like that situation would be determined as a ‘good’ thing in this study?
I guess they are just operating under the assumption that any conversation is good conversation.
here’s more raw data on the ads talked about on twitter
here’s the link http://makeitwr.../t/tests/hi.php
It’s funny how companies have brain washed people into watching TV ads. It’s now escalated into more free advertising via #superbowlads and #superads09
Sure, they’re new and some of the ads are good. I watch the games for the sake of the game. When did people take their pottie or food breaks – during the game?
BTW, my fave was the shower ad
how can you determine the success of an ad from just the NUMBER of tweets? for all we know each of those tweets could have been negative and everyone could have hated the ad.
the only true way to know is to go in and hand count each tweet during that commercials timeframe. only by looking at what the majority of the tweets are saying will you know if the ad was a success.
Very true although a lot of tweets I saw also displayed a rating for each individual ad. I agree what you say as unless reading every tweet you can’t announce a true winner!
Jason,
It depends how you define “success.” GoDaddy’s success metrics probably look more at total amount of mentions and press, even if a big chunk of it is negative. If you ask a people to rate ads and give them a positive or negative rating, you’ll end up with a general impression of favorability. But, just because someone states they like something when asked or after experiencing it does not mean it’s something worth talking about. And when it comes to the super bowl, post bowl chatter is a major objective for almost everyone.
The fact that GoDaddy is an Internet company is a confound for measuring its success via aggregate Tweetings. If someone’s net-savvy enough to be updating Twitter during the Super Bowl, it’s highly likely that they are more familiar with GoDaddy than the average user, and thus are more likely to comment on it, especially considering it competes in a more cliquish sector.
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Oh and career builder was definitely the best… the bud light commercial where the guy wants to cut spending by not buying bud-lite for corporate meetings was hilarious also
The numbers are so small, I don’t see any real significance there.
+ both the GoDaddy and Bridgestone ads sucked big time, and it probably is what those tweets said.
Hulu rules. While Tweetbowl set up the most no-brainer way to calclulate veiwer engagement through Twitter, Hulu worked out partnerships with the other commercial partners to make its way to the TV commercials.
It is the first time an online video Website buys a SB ad!
I have a really hard time believing that “most people tune in to watch the Super Bowl for the ads” without some statistic backing it up.
Cool article and report though.