Branded Multichannel Ad Campaigns Emerge From Super Bowl Spots

Football fans didn’t tap into mobile devices to catch the New York Giants’ win over the New Engine Patriots Sunday as many analysts expected, but the ad industry did hit a major milestone in multichannel marketing. Consumers searched for data and game stats on desktop and mobile search engines, and viewed ads on YouTube and other video channels.

Attaching buzz from Super Bowl ads this year to video, mobile, social and search marketing became a major departure from previous Super Bowl TV campaigns, according to Mary Beth Keelty, vice president, marketing at digital marketing agency Zeta Interactive.

“Multichannel marketing that can take the campaign through pre-promotion, event and follow-up later turns the package into a campaign,” she said. “We’ve heard people talk about this before — but really, we saw it this year. We even saw media channels like “Extra” start to cover commercials.”

The overall buzz around this year’s Super Bowl commercials is slightly less positive than that of last year, according to Zeta. The average buzz ranking, 80.9% positive, represents commercials at this year’s Super Bowl, slightly down from 83.5% positive the morning after the game in 2011.

While buzz dropped slightly this year, the volume surrounding Super Bowl ads skyrocketed. This year the Super Bowl ads received 14% more attention in the first 12 hours, compared with the entire 24-hour period following last year’s game.

Zeta’s Top 10 list of commercials receiving the highest Zeta Buzz ranking at this year’s Super Bowl starts with Honda “Matthew’s Day Off – Ferris Bueller” – 91% positive, followed by M&M’s “Mrs. Brown – Sexy and You Know It” at 90% positive, Budweiser “Eternal Optimism – Block Party” at 90% positive, Acura “Transactions – Seinfeld” at 89% positive, and Skechers “Dog Race” at 89% positive. The bottom five ads came from Lexus, Hyundai, Chevy, Cadillac, and H&M. Some ads did better than others, but 27 ads received Zeta buzz rankings of 80% or better at this year’s game, which is the same as last year.