Sysomos Blog

Analyzing Super Bowl Ads and Twitter

The ads that appeared during yesterday’s Super Bowl attracted a lot of attention – almost as much as the game itself.

To get a better idea of how well the ads resonated with Twitter users, we used Sysomos MAP to query most of the Super Bowl ads to see which ones generated the most tweets over the past two days.

We also used our sentiment engine to determine whether the amount of positive and negative conversations for each ad. We took a conservative approach to the queries by searching for the advertiser’s brand name along with “Super Bowl” in the same tweet. An example query is “Super Bowl” AND “Google”.

By far, Google attracted the most tweets (25,076). This was not surprising, given that it was the first time that Google has advertised on television, and Twitter users are likely Google fans. This also demonstrates the web advertisement giant’s acceptance of more traditional TV advertising.

Dorito’s was second with 6,710 tweets, while Budweiser was third with 4,550. Dorito’s and Budweiser ran several different ads during the Super Bowl, which was won 31-17 by the New Orleans Saints.

Among the top-10 ads that attracted the most tweets, Intel attracted the most positive conversations (81%), while Coca-Cola’s Mr. Burns’ ad garnered the most negative conversations (12%).

Note that the number of tweets in the chart above are based on mentions of the brand and the phrase “super bowl” in the same tweet to avoid counting general mentions of the brand name.

We also used MAP to explore the amount of Twitter activity for the two teams over the past three days (Feb. 6 to 8). The chart shows the amount of activity for the New Orleans Saints and Indianapolis Colts was fairly even until Sunday when the number of tweets about the Colts surged – likely because the Colts took at 10-0 lead in the first quarter.

When the Saints rallied for 15 points in the fourth-quarter to take the lead, the amount of activity spiked.

By Mark Evans - February 8th, 2010 - No Comments »
Posted in Events, Social Media

What Super Bowl Ads Had the Most Buzz?

For many people, the Super Bowl isn’t about the game – although yesterday’s match-up between the New Orleans Saints and the Indianapolis Colts was thrilling – but the dozens of commercials that appear throughout the four-hour event. For advertisers, there is a lot on the line with some 30-second spots costing as much as $3-million.

With so much interest, we were curious about whether the ads seen as the best attracted the most buzz within the social media landscape. So, we used our MAP to get a lay of the land.

Within our BuzzGraph, the most discussed keyword is “commercial”. The strongest links are XLIV (aka Super Bowl 44), “Dockers”, which ran an ad entitled “Men Without Pants” that featured a group of men walking through a field without pants; “Dorito’s”, which ran four different ads, and “Parisian”, an ad from Google (the first time it has done a Super Bowl ad) that featured search results of someone traveling to Paris and meeting a Parisian.

What’s interesting is the ads by Dorito’s, Dockers or Google were not seen as among the best, according to the Los Angeles Times. The Times’ top-five ads were from Snickers, Bridgestone, Coca-Cola, Budweiser and CBS.

As well, there was little chatter about a controversial pro-life ad featuring University of Florida quarterback Tim Tebow and his mother, which garnered a lot of attention leading up to the game.

Some people suggest the Snickers ad (below), which appeared just before the Tebow ad, may have defused the situation. The Snickers ad featured 88-year-old actress Betty White being tackled during a pick-up football game.

The best ad, according to the LA Times, was from Coca-Cola, in which Homer Simpson’s boss, Mr. Burns, loses all his money, but the people of Springfield cheer him up with a Coke and a smile.

In terms of the total social media conversations about the Super Bowl, there have been 1.6 million tweets, 40,338 blog posts and 11,548 articles since yesterday.

For the past week, there have been 2.3 million tweets, 96,684 blog posts and 37,467 articles.

By Mark Evans - February 8th, 2010 - 3 Comments »
Tags: ads, betty white, new orleans, nfl, superbowl
Posted in Events, Technology

The Talk of Twitter in 2010…So Far

Although 2010 is only a month old, there’s been no lack of news –the earthquake in Haiti, the continuing soap opera surrounding superstar golfer Tiger Woods and his string of affairs, the stunning box office success of Avatar, and the National Football League playoffs.

To get a handle on the most active conversations, Sysomos explored more than 100 million tweets from Jan. 1 to Jan. 15 within six categories: people, locations, film, business, sports and misc entities.

People

Barack Obama was the most talked about person amid growing criticism of how he has performed during his first year as U.S. president. Lady Gaga, one of the world’s most popular singers and performance artists, was second, while Michael Jackson was third amid reports that prosecutors were looking at laying involuntary manslaughter charges against his personal physician, Dr. Conrad Murray. Pat Robertson was fifth after he claimed the earthquake in Haiti was a result of a “pact with the devil” made by Haitian rebels when it was a French colony.

Location

It was no surprise that Haiti was the most talked about country amid the tragic earthquake that happened on Jan. 12. It is estimated that the total number of deaths may be as high as 200,000.

Film

The most talked about movie on Twitter was Avatar, which has attracted worldwide ticket sales of more than $1.85-billion, making it the highest grossing movie of all time. The three-dimensional film, which won the Golden Globe for Best Picture, Drama earlier this month, is expected to receive a Best Picture nomination when the Oscar nominations are announced on Feb. 2. Sherlock Holmes, the second-highest grossing movie behind Avatar over the past few months, attracted the second-most attention. The only person to rank among the top-15 film keywords was Edward Cullen, an actor who stars as a vampire a character in the popular Twilight film series.

Business

YouTube attracted the most conversations as Nielsen reported that it had 105.5 million unique U.S. visitors in December, who watched 6.4 billion videos. Facebook, which now has more than 350 million registered users, was the second-most talked about business, while Google, Microsoft and Yahoo were third, fourth and fifth respectively.

Sports

The National Football League’s Cincinnati Bengals, which won its second division title since 1990, were front and centre on Twitter following the death of wide receiver Chris Henry, who died after falling out of the back of his fiancée’s pick-up truck. It was noteworthy that three of the top-five most talked about sports teams – the Seattle Seahawks, Cleveland Browns and New York Knicks – had suffered through or are currently having terrible seasons.

Miscellaneous Entities

iTunes was a dominant theme on Twitter, likely because of the intense speculation that the much-speculated Apple tablet computer would have the same impact on books that iTunes had on the music industry. The iPhone OS, which ranked fifth, also benefited from the Apple tablet chatter. Wordpress was fourth after it unveiled a fairly significant update to its popular blogging platform.

Methodology: We analyzed more than 100 millions tweets collected by our crawlers during the first two weeks of January. We used Sysomos’ semantic text analysis technology used to extract lists of above-mentioned entities. The algorithms are intelligent so they can take into account different variations: e.g., Barack Hussein Obama II, Barack H. Obama, or just Obama when referring to U.S. President Barack Obama. Using this analysis, we were able to find how many times each of these entities occurred within these 100 millions tweets, and then rank them based on how often they were mentioned.

By Mark Evans - February 1st, 2010 - 9 Comments »
Tags: barack obama, haiti, sysomos, twitter
Posted in Social Media, Technology

How Not to Be Overwhelmed by Social Media

The growth has social media has dramatically changed how we consume and share information, as well as changed the online landscape in many ways. At the same time, social media has also made the Web a 24/7 “beast” in which a growing number of people are seemingly always connected.

In some respects, it can be overwhelming because the Web doesn’t have an “On/Off” switch. The data keeps coming day and night regardless of the weather, time of year or where you live. It’s a digital deluge that never stops.

So, how do you control social media so it doesn’t become overwhelming. Here are some tips:

1. Use social media when it fits your schedule and personal/professional schedule. If work is crazy busy or you’re spending time with family and friends, don’t feel like you have to get a digital fix. Social media is like a parade, you might miss something if you bend down to tie your shoe, but more floats will be coming when you look back again.

2. Focus your social media efforts. Pick the social media services that meet your interests and provide the most valuable, interesting or entertaining content. Don’t try to cover the entire landscape – Twitter, blogs, Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, Flickr, YouTube, et al – because your efforts will be spread way too thin.

3. Give yourself some social media “windows” during the day to allocate a certain amount of time to read blogs, Twitter, etc. Having a disciplined approach will do a lot of make sure your productivity doesn’t suffer.

4. Use tools such as Instapaper or Read it Later to put aside interesting blog posts when you have the time to read them. On Twitter, use the “favorite” feature as a way to bookmark tweets that capture your attention.

5. Give yourself a social media vacation once in a while – something John Mayer describes as a “digital cleanse”. As hard as it might be to walk away from the “buffet”, it can be a healthy mental break.

By Mark Evans - January 26th, 2010 - 3 Comments »
Tags: blogs, facebook, productivity, Social Media, twitter
Posted in Social Media

What Super Bowl Ads Had the Most Buzz?

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