The Super Bowl and The Web Love Story In Numbers

Super Bowl WebThe Super Bowl is for many years now one of the biggest T.V. events of the year if not the biggest one (you can’t really argue with an average of 111.3 million viewers). However, in the last few years this event also expanded beyond T.V. enormous broadcast ratings, into the virtual world.

Over the last few days the web simply exploded with Super Bowl-related posts/pages/comments/ads/videos/photos all over. I want to dedicate this post to review how the Super Bowl-internet phenomenon has been expressed in numbers and effects.

NBC: More Than 2.1 Million Online Viewers

According to an article in the New York Times, more than 2.1 million viewers have watched the Super Bowl on live broadcast stream online (data gathered from Omniture and mDialog). In total, 78.6 million minutes watched online throughout 4.59 million live video streams, indicating that many videos had to be reactivated.

It might be possible that many people preferred watching the Super Bowl over the web in addition to the T.V. broadcast (or completely instead) because the online video stream offered changing camera angles possibilities by the user and a chat box.

Google: Huge Increase In Super Bowl-Related Searches

Google has revealed that there was a giant rise in searches for “super bowl live stream” and other related searches throughout all day mostly in English but also in other languages (Spanish, French, German), where the peak was obviously right before the game has began. Desktop computers produced the biggest search rise following by Smartphones and tablets.

Google Super Bowl Searches Rise

Google also disclosed that during the week of the game searches that relates to Super Bowl ads have increased by 200% on desktop, 970% on tablets and amazingly 2700% on Smartphones! Additionally, 41% of all Super Bowl ad-related searches in the U.S. came from mobile devices.

Not surprising, all the five uprising searches during the game were related to the Super Bowl:

  1. Madonna
  2. Halftime show
  3. Patriots
  4. Tom Brady
  5. Giants

Twitter: Two Tweets Per Second Sports Records

The game has produced not one, but two new Tweets per second records in the sports category! First, Twitter has released a Tweet announcing that in the final three minutes of the game, there was an incredible average of 10,000 Tweets per second!

About an hour later, Twitter released a second Tweet elaborating that at the end of the game there was a peak of 12,233 Tweets per second and following by 10,245 Tweets per second during Madonna’s performance at halftime. These two records have topped easily the last sports record of 9,420 Tweets per second during Denver Broncos NFL playoff win.

Adage: Top Super Bowl Ads By Social Media Comments

Adage (with Bluefin Labs) has published a list of the top Super Bowl ads ranked by their social media comments (mostly from Facebook and Twitter) during the first 45 minutes after the ad was aired. The most prominent thing is the high level of users engagement with the ads on the social media. Here are the numbers:

Top Super Bowl Ads Social Mentions

YouTube: Top Trending Super Bowl Ad Videos

YouTube has posted that even before the game, over the weekend there were more than 30 million views of Super Bowl ads and ad-teasers, where the top trending video was Chevy Silverado Super Bowl ad. This activity in 2012 has surpassed 2011 activity at the same period, which considered as highly productive for the advertisers.

During the first half of the game, the top rising video searches were for “Bud Light Platinum commercial”, “OK Go Needing/Getting” and “M&M commercial”. During the second half the top rising video searches were for “Doritos commercial”, “David Beckham commercial”, “Clint Eastwood commercial” and “Betty White commercial”.

After the game ended there was a big spike in video searches for “I believe in a thing called love” (Samsung Super Bowl ad), which you can watch here: