#SuperBowl Advertisers Turn To PPC Advertising To Capture Big Game Searchers

The 2014 Super Bowl is upon us and it’s always interesting to see how advertisers try to capture the value they create with their Super Bowl campaigns. This year the big game will be winning mobile engagement during the game. I was doing my own pre-game research when I discovered that many advertisers are prepared for the big game.

This graph below shows the massive spike in search volume around Super Bowl commercials.

No surprise here, I bet most of you ran a few Google searches the day after last years Super Bowl. I guess if you are gonna drop $4,000,000 on some air time to want to make sure to capture as much of that interest as possible.

Adage tracks which companies and ad agencies buy and make Super Bowl commercials, and here is their 2014 list.

I decided to run a few searches for different brands that are running ads and see how many of them are running paid search for their campaigns.

Here is a snapshot of the results for, “Super Bowl Commercials”

Looks like many advertisers are driving traffic to their YouTube channels and pages that host their commercials. Butterfinger is the only company in the top ad slots driving traffic to a new website.  It is also interesting to note the private jets ad targeting Super Bowl travel, I wonder if that ad converts for them.

Here is another screenshot for a brand related Super Bowl search.

Looks like Axe is not only driving traffic to a new website, and their actual commercial, but is also promoting the hashtag they are using during their commercials.

Jaguar, who insisted they will win the digital, multi screen and online engagement game this year seems to  be promoting their Good to be Bad campaign as well.

I don’t know if the VW, Squarespace, Bud Light or Butterfingers Cup ppc ads are meant to target their competing advertisers, or more likely just a broad match ad on Super Bowl. It’s interesting again to note that Bud Light, and Jaguar are both using their # they are promoting during the game.

Looks like M&M’s is driving traffic to their Channel with a somewhat generic ad.

One advertiser that I would expect to be very savvy and on top of their game seems to be absent from this game.

At least Bud Light will capture those searchers.

Audi also seems missing from the party. Same goes for Bank of America. Carmax is also missing.

At least Doritos made it, but than again they ran a campaign long before the actual game. Again we see Bud Light crashing the search results.

H&M is missing which is a big surprise since they are doing one of the most innovative campaigns in Super Bowl history. They are actually letting you purchase products featured in the ad from your remote control if you have the right Tech in place.

I searched for Heinz SuperBowl Commercial, but nothing came up… However, a search for their brand name returned their super bowl campaign.

Pepsi, which is sponsoring the half time show seems to be on their game… Bare in mind I ran this search during the GRAMMY’s

Well Played Pepsi. Although Bud Light seems to have crashed the game better than anyone else.

There is still a week, so I guess many might have their campaigns ready to go live during and after the game.

What I find the most interesting is the use of Hashtags in their limited space for PPC ads. I wonder how they’ll do during the Hashtag Bowl, where MarketingLand tracks the most digitally engaged brands during the big game.