Five Social Video Facts About The Super Bowl That Every Brand Manager Needs To Know

So your brand has forked out over $4million on a 30-second Super Bowl spot. You’ve picked a great slot, TV numbers are predicted to smash last year’s audience of 11.3 million, and everyone in the marketing team is confident the ad will be the talk of the Monday office water-cooler.

But is this enough to justify such a huge budget? After all, while the passive viewing figures of the Super Bowl on network TV look impressive at first glance, the real meat of the campaign response happens online, where conversations and social sharing turn the spark of popularity into an online phenomenon.

Thanks to the power of social video – which essentially means creating video content specifically to be shared online through social media platforms – both official sponsors and brands looking to piggyback on the game’s massive consumer profile have a unique opportunity to connect with their audience and boost their ROI.

Unruly’s research has found that for every branded video shared, an average of 25 peers could see that content. This is based on the average number of Facebook friends and Twitter followers a user has, and factors in Facebook’s EdgeRank, the filtering algorithm that limits the number of people who see the updates. This means that social video has the potential to generate enormous global media reach.

It also has serious staying power, with 55% of the shares from the top 20 Super Bowl ads of 2012 occurring after March 1, a month after the big game.

However, despite this – with some notable exceptions, such as Volkswagen, which scored a massive hit in 2011 with The Force (below) – advertisers have yet to embrace the opportunity which social video advertising presents to bolster and prolong their in-game TV advertising.

Volkswagen – The Force

But how do you ensure your ad will not only be the talk of the office the day after Super Sunday, but also shared across the web throughout the year?

Well, at Unruly, we have launched a Super Bowl Social Video Playbook to help. Our industry-leading data resources and research from our Social Video Lab have yielded critical, actionable insights for brands to follow.

It gives guidance on not only what kind of content is most likely to gain traction across the social web, but also whether brands should release teaser videos in the lead-up to Super Sunday and when they should release their ads online.

So to whet your appetite, we have come up with five social video facts about the Super Bowl that every CMO should be aware of. But if five is just not enough, you can check out our snazzy infographic, which has five more here. Enjoy!