Facebook Led Super Bowl In-Game Viewership While YouTube Dominated Post Game

Visible Measures’ Research Reveals that a Multi-Platform, Cross-Screen Strategy Was the Key to Success for Super Bowl 50 Advertisers

BOSTON – Visible Measures, the leader in content advertising technology, announced trends and insights surrounding Super Bowl 50 online branded video campaigns. Leveraging Visible Measures’ dataset, spanning 600,000 web and mobile properties, the company observed the following trends: 1) Facebook accounted for 55 percent of the viewership of the top ten Super Bowl ads – driven by sharing in users’ Newsfeeds; 2) Over 45 brands capitalized on the Super Bowl buzz releasing content that did not air in-game; and, 3) Humor led as the dominant creative approach for this year’s Super Bowl ads.

“We’ve been seeing an increasing amount of web and mobile engagement and viewership surrounding Super Bowl ads each year”

Visible Measures saw a 64 percent increase in Internet viewership of the top ten Super Bowl ads compared to 2015, demonstrating the growing importance of an Internet presence for what has been thought of historically as a TV-dominated event. Super Bowl 50 video advertising content captured over 671MM views to date, with the top ten ads accounting for over 276MM (41 percent) of those views.

Super Bowl 50 Branded Video Trends

  • Facebook Led as the Dominant Video Platform for the Top Ten Ads – Facebook accounted for 55 percent of all viewership of the top ten Super Bowl ads, compared to 27 percent in 2015. This translates to over 152MM views on Facebook to date for the top ten ads. However, none of the top ten advertisers relied solely on Facebook, instead running a multi-platform approach that included YouTube and other platforms. Facebook accounted for anywhere between five percent and 93 percent of views for the top ten ads.
  • YouTube Won the Post-Game Race – During the game, Facebook dominated viewership, which follows Facebook newly launched tools to position their app as the perfect ‘second screen’ compliment to a TV. From 6 p.m. to 11 p.m. EST, Facebook saw 20 million views on Super Bowl ad content, where YouTube saw four million. However, within the 12 hours following the game, YouTube saw an additional 31 million views of Super Bowl content compared to Facebook’s nine million views during that timeframe. Facebook might be more relevant immediately, during, and after the game as a platform to share and view timely content, but YouTube looks to be winning the long game through its superior search experience and its capability as the ‘reference library’ for video. Visible Measures will revisit data in the coming days and weeks to see if these results change as time passes.
  • Out-Of-Game Strategy Success — Over 45 brands took advantage of the Super Bowl buzz this year, creating content that either aired outside the game or didn’t even air at all. Esurance, Victoria’s Secret, Pantene, KFC, and Adobe were among these brands. However, the two most viewed campaigns in this category were Ritz Crackers and Sam’s Club which were online-only campaigns, capturing close to 31MM and 24MM views respectively.
  • Humorous Content Won Super Bowl 50 — 57 percent of all ads that aired in-game last night used a humorous creative to capture consumer attention. As of this morning, these campaigns captured over 341MM views. Celebrities & Icons took second place with 33 percent of nationally aired ads and a total of over 147MM views. Heartwarming/Inspirational content rounds out the top three with 16 percent of campaigns and close to 66MM views.

“We’ve been seeing an increasing amount of web and mobile engagement and viewership surrounding Super Bowl ads each year,” said Brian Shin, CEO of Visible Measures. “It’s not just TV ads that matter anymore—brands need to take advantage of all major video platforms whether it’s YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, or Snapchat in order to see the most ROI from their campaigns.”

In addition to these online video trends surrounding Super Bowl 50, Visible Measures compiled data on the top ten campaigns with an in-game spot as well. The top ads saw an average viewership of 27.6MM views, a 67 percent increase from 2015.

Wix.com captured the No. 1 spot with their #StartStunning campaign. Their winning strategy included four main components:

  • #StartStunning launched back in early January giving Wix.com an early start on capturing consumer attention.
  • Wix.com took advantage of buzz around the Kung Fu Panda 3 movie which was released on January 29, 2016.
  • The campaign was comprised of 12 different creative executions, giving consumers multiple opportunities to engage with their content.
  • The campaign took advantage of both Facebook and YouTube, with 57 percent of views coming from Facebook.

The top ten nationally aired Super Bowl ads include:

1. Wix.com – #StartStunning – 36,459,669 True Reach®

2. Hyundai – The Chase – 35,948,842 True Reach®

3. Doritos – Crash the Super Bowl: Final Edition – 33,100,768 True Reach®

4. Amazon – #BaldwinBowl – 31,498,627 True Reach®

5. Mountain Dew – Puppymonkeybaby – 25,042,602 True Reach®

6. T-Mobile – Restricted Bling – 24,636,249 True Reach®

7. AXE – Find Your Magic – 24,080,132 True Reach®

8. Budweiser – #GiveADamn – 22,824,326 True Reach®

9. Heinz – Wiener Stampede – 21,586,100 True Reach®

10. Mini – #DefyLabels – 20,883,863 True Reach®

About Visible Measures

Visible Measures, the leading content advertising technology provider, enables brands to better compete for consumer engagement by maximizing their Share of Attention relative to media spend in video content advertising. The company’s platform is fueled by a massive proprietary dataset, as well as patented programmatic technology that combines five trillion data points to reach more than 500 million unique monthly users across 600,000 web and mobile properties. World-class advertisers and brands successfully rely on Visible Measures’ video content advertising platform every day to drive unmatched consumer engagement worldwide. Visit us online at www.visiblemeasures.com or follow us on Twitter @visiblemeasures.

True Reach and Visible Measures and the Visible Measures logo are registered marks owned by Visible Measures Corp. Other company and product names may be trademarks or servicemarks of their respective owners.

via BusinessWire