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Going into the Big Game: SBLII Pre-Game Buzz Winners

Posted on by The iSpot Team
Super Bowl LIII

It’s Game Day, which means the battle for brand attention is reaching a fever pitch. No sense in holding back now. What clever surprises are in store? Who knows but what’s certain is at iSpot, we’ll be measuring how all of the Super Bowl 52 ads play across Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and in search engines, as well as what happens on the screens our 8 million connected TV sets.

Below are some topline insights, the top winners by brand and by some of the categories as we head into the game.

Ten Topline Super Bowl Advertiser Insights

THROUGH SATURDAY NIGHT ET BEFORE SUPER BOWL SUNDAY
Year Brands Ads Est. Spend Airings TV Impressions Total Online Views Social Actions
2014 30 42 $3,777,887 340 100,812,889 1,223,285
2015 41 106 $12,554,145 2,552 335,044,300 2,015,352
2016 46 79 $10,360,291 2,543 353,042,933 322,411,762 1,330,749
2017 52 95 $11,752,326 4,755 814,554,315 331,506,812 2,575,494
2018 44 114 $15,383,881 960 640,015,319 372,283,341 2,343,125
  1. Coming into today, SB advertisers have generated 372.3 million online views, 2.3 million social actions expressly related to the ads. 96.4 million of online views are organic (unpaid) on YouTube. Upvotes on YouTube climbed over 219k, with 34k giving a thumbs down.
  2. The ads collectively racked up 640 million TV impressions, as measured from the glass of TVs. 17% (108 million) of which were earned, meaning they occurred within programming and not inside of an ad break.
  3. Social Actions Steady YoY, Doubled since 2014: The amount of social activity, likes, shares, comments, etc across Facebook, YouTube and Twitter is within 10% of last year. While 2016 was an off year, social activity has doubled since 2014, in part a reflection of Facebook adding video.
  4. Buying views doesn’t mean engagement: some brands are doing heavy promotions but that spend isn’t adding up to engagement. Late comer Wix has 25 million + views, but only a few thousand engagements. Tostitos, for the 15.9 million views has under 2,000 social actions and only 1.3 million earned views on YouTube.
  5. Less brands playing pre-release – 44 brands released ads prior to the game in 2018, that number is down from 52 in 2017.
  6. Starting slow, finishing hot. For the last few years brands started releasing ads two weeks out. That trend reversed course, this year with 20% fewer brands releasing 45% fewer ads before this week. But brands are finishing strong with pre-releases and teasers, collectively: brands now have released the more teasers and ads coming into game day (114) than in past years, (95 last year, 106 in 2015).
  7. While less brands took to TV, spending was higher overall because a few SB advertisers chose to launch TV campaigns during higher cost prime time spots.
  8. Total social reach so far is 296 million. SBLI ads last year got a collective social reach of 3.6 billion impressions.
  9. There were 8.2 billion TV impressions from SBLI: that’s what (82 brands) 170 ads x 200 million TVs for 4 hours will generate.
  10. On Super Bowl Sunday, driving actions are expensive – same day leads against a $5 million price tag yield conversions in the $27-$100 range. But when iSpot.tv mapped TV ad exposures to sales activity in a 7 day window for one customer, that price dropped to $4.40 and $3.41 after 14 days.

Brand Insights

  • Dew vs Doritos is the winner of the pre-war 35.5% (817k of 2.3 million) of social engagements for the super Bowl ads make Pepsi Co’s co- brand the winner. The brand also leads by another measure, earned TV expsosure. Without spending a dime, the ad picked up 24.8 million additional TV impressions.
  • Australia: The tourism board came in early and got people buzzing about its movie trailer themed ad. It picked up 43.4 million video views and generated 578k social engagements for it.
  • Amazon Echo generating real excitement 24.4 million of 31 million views for the echo campaign are earned, that’s complemented by almost 100k social actions. It also picked up 10.9 million TV impressions without spending on official ads.
  • NBC’s Unprecedented Promo Push In past years promos for shows weren’t ranking high if at all, but this year strong tune-in campaigns for This is Us and Olympics, especially on Facebook. The network has generated over 100 million views, off of excitement for the Olympics and This is Us. While not equating into viral heat on YouTube, the social chatter to support this promo push is strong with 552k social actions.
  • Bud Drinks to Emotions: Budweisers 28.3 million pre-game views generated 113.4k social actions. 14.5 or just over half of all views came in as earned on YouTube.
  • Here comes the Bud Knight and the land of Dilly charging up the charts in two days – already ranking #6 by Digital SOV, Bud Light has generated 12.4 million earned views and 57,000 social actions.

Super Bowl Pre-Game Ad Winners by Category (as of midnight EST)

Earned Media on TV

  1. WeatherTech – Promises: 14.4 million TV ad impressions
  2. Dew v Doritos – Tongue Twisters: 12.6 million TV ad impressions
  3. Peta – Redemption: 10.8 million TV ad impressions
  4. Amazon Echo – Alexa Loses Her Voice: 10.6 million TV ad impressions

Social Reach

  1. PepsiCo – Pepsi Generations: This is the Pepsi: 34.9 million social impressions
  2. Budweiser – Stand By You: 34.1 million social impressions
  3. PepsiCo – Battle: 28.5 million social impressions

Most Buzz by Brand Overall

Rankings based on digital share of voice: (a combination of social actions and view counts weighted by potential reach and impact for FB, YouTube, Twitter and Google Search)

  1. PepsiCo – Battle: 21.34%
  2. Amazon Echo – Alexa Loses Her Voice: 12.61%
  3. Tourism Australia – Dundee: The Son of a Legend Returns Home: Official Trailer: 10.83%

Social Actions

  1. Dew x Doritos- Battle: 703,979 social actions
  2. Tourism Australia – Dundee: The Son of a Legend Returns Home: Official Trailer: 381,786 social actions
  3. Budweiser – Stand By You: 107,335 social actions

Online Views

  1. Amazon Echo – Alexa Loses Her Voice: 29.3 million online views
  2. Budweiser – Stand By You: 26.6 million online views
  3. Wix.com – Coolest Collaboration: 23 million online views

Earned Views on YouTube

  1. Amazon Echo – Alexa Loses Her Voice: 22.3 million Earned YouTube Views
  2. Budweiser – Stand By You: 13.7 million Earned YouTube Views
  3. Bud Light – the Bud Knight: 11.1 million Earned YouTube Views

Facebook Video Views

(NBC’s tune in campaign for This is Us has 71.2 million views, 70.9 million of which are on FB)

  1. Tourism Australia – Dundee: The Son of a Legend Returns Home: Official Trailer: 20.9 million Facebook Video Views
  2. PepsiCo – Battle: 12.9 million Facebook Video Views
  3. Budweiser – Stand By You: 10.5 million Facebook Video Views

Upvotes on YouTube & iSpot.tv

  1. Amazon Echo – Alexa Loses Her Voice: 48,691 positive votes
  2. PepsiCo – Battle: 31,796 positive votes
  3. Bud Light – the Bud Knight: 30,225 positive votes