Super Bowl XLIV & Twitter – The Socialping Analysis

Sunday was Super Bowl XLIV and was by far the largest stress test we’ve done on Socialping. We monitored over 630,000 tweets mentioning the Super Bowl, and another 270,000 related to all the various advertisers for a total of around 900,000 tweets in a 4 hour span.

While we did learn a lot about how Socialping handles itself during a high load, we also learned a lot about what you, the viewers of the Super Bowl, thought about the advertisers. In this blog post, I’d like to share some of those findings.

There are many ways to summarize the “winners”, like using sentiment analysis, determining long term winners, and quite a few other ways, but for this analysis we’re going to be basing the rankings on the peak spike during the Super Bowl. After all, the sole purpose of a massive spend like what these companies have done with the Super Bowl is simply to get people talking about your brand.

The Winners

It’s hard to name a clear winner as far as the number of people that mentioned their brand after their ads were aired, but the top 3, based on the tweet spikes after airing were Budweiser, Google and Doritos, in that order.

Budweiser

Budweiser had numerous ads that helped it to gain the number one spot, but here is the ad that appears to have caused the most tweets:

[EDIT] Well, that lasted long… apparently Budweiser doesn’t want people to watch their ads. They pulled it from YouTube – no wonder they do so crappy on Twitter, I don’t think they’ve realized the benefits of social media if they are still pulling stunts like this.

Budweiser gets very little love on twitter normally, prior to the Super Bowl Budweiser got, on average, 182 tweets per hour, yup, just 182. However, the hour that they ran their most popular ad, they got 19,134 tweets.  Now, a day later, they are averaging 258 Tweets per hour.

Super Bowl XLIV - Budweiser Tweet Volume

Super Bowl XLIV - Budweiser Tweet Volume

Google

Google went much more sentimental, and it appears to have worked quite well for them. This is the first time Google has ever advertised in the Super Bowl and I’m pretty sure they’ll be back after this response.

Prior to the Super Bowl ad, on average Google was mentioned 1,753 times per hour. The hour that Google’s ad ran, they were mentioned 15,693 times.

Super Bowl XLIV - Google Tweet Volume

Super Bowl XLIV - Google Tweet Volume

As you can see from the below screenshot, one of the charts Socialping makes available is a “Tweet Distribution” chart which shows the tweets for multiple days over a single 24 hour period – Google’s mentions after the second day are still up on Twitter.

Super Bowl XLIV - Google Tweet Distribution

Super Bowl XLIV - Google Tweet Distribution

Doritos

Doritos had a double whammy that they pulled; the most popular of the two was actually the second ad they ran during the Super Bowl and is below:

Here is Doritos first commercial, which was only outdone by about 1,500 tweets. It is certainly possible that some of the second ad got a residual bump by people talking about the first ad:

Doritos has a very similar pattern to Budweiser, almost no mentions on Twitter and then an explosion of mentions when their ads ran. They were different than most of the other Super Bowl advertisers though, they practically created a blanket of ads throughout the entire Super Bowl time slot, which explains the multiple bumps in mentions that you see.

Super Bowl XLIV - Doritos Tweet Volume

Super Bowl XLIV - Doritos Tweet Volume

Unfortunately they not only mimicked Budweiser before the Super Bowl, they appear to be continuing it after the Super Bowl – they dropped to an average of just 258 Tweets per hour, which is exactly the same number of tweets per hour that mention Budweiser – odd.

Super Bowl XLIV - Dorito's Tweet Distribution

Super Bowl XLIV - Dorito's Tweet Distribution

The Others

Despite various other good ads, like the ones from Snickers (spiked at 3,660), Go Daddy (two ads/spikes: 3,333 and 2,104), Vizio (spiked at 3,116), Boost Mobile (spiked at 2,243) and Denny’s (2,972 and 4,407) none of them were even close to the top 3 in terms of brand mentions, except for Bud Light.  Bud Light was actually only about 2,400 tweets away from grabbing the number 3 spot.

Super Bowl XLIV - Bud Light Tweet Volume

Super Bowl XLIV - Bud Light Tweet Volume

Denny’s does look like it’s going to have a secondary effect.  They are giving away an Original Grand Slam on Tuesday, February 9th, 2010. If you look at the chart below, mentions of them are already starting to swell. We’ll be providing another post after the event that details this a bit more.

Super Bowl XLIV - Denny's - Tweet Volume

Super Bowl XLIV - Denny's Tweet Volume

Category Winners (in place order):

Alcohol

  1. Budweiser
  2. Bud Light
  3. Michelob Ultra
  4. Budweiser Select

(Yes, they are all from the same parent company Anheuser-Busch and Budweiser easily won this one).

Vehicles

  1. Honda
  2. Audi
  3. Volkswagen of America
  4. Dodge
  5. Kia
  6. Hyundai

Movies

  1. The Last Airbender (Paramount Pictures)
  2. Alice and Wonderland (Walt Disney Pictures)
  3. Robin Hood (Universal Pictures)
  4. The Wolfman (Universal Pictures)
  5. Prince of Persia (Walt Disney Pictures)
  6. Shutter Island (Paramount Pictures)

Interested to see another category?  Just let us know in the comments.

And last, but not least….

The Losers

  1. Budweiser Select
  2. Pop-Secret
  3. Teleflora
  4. Michelob Ultra
  5. TRUTV

So that’s our Superbowl analysis. Rest assured, we’ll be watching the Twittersphere during all major (and even some minor) events and be posting the results here. Pretty cool, huh?

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The Pingers

Joel Strellner / @jstrellnerCEO & part-time Code Monkey
Adam Lum / @alumBack-End Developer
Tony Fonseca / @tonyfonsecaUX Guy
Eric Martin / @ericmmartinUI Developer