We’ve gotten to the point where pretty much every social media and advertising company has to release its own report about Super Bowl ad trends and effectiveness. One of the more interesting ones was a collaboration between Chute and Ditto.
The two startups work on visual content (Chute gives marketers tools for harnessing user-generated content like photos, while Ditto is more focused on visual recognition and search), so it’s no surprise that their report focuses on this area, as well.
I thought the most interesting bit was the contrast between Instagram, where the most engaged photos posted by Super Bowl advertisers came (in descending order) from BMW (twice!), Nissan, Mercedes and Nationwide. (That’s the Mindy Kaling Nationwide ad, not the one everyone’s complaining about.) On Twitter, meanwhile, the most popular photo came from Cheetos, followed by Doritos, Bud Light and Canon.
This is maybe not a huge surprise, since fancy cars generally make for a prettier photo than a bag of chips (sorry, Cheetos), but still worth noting; Chute told me via email that these differences provide “insights into where brands might want to spend advertising dollars based on industry.”
Measuring social media engagement doesn’t necessarily tell you whether an ad is actually working, though. Take those car manufacturers. While they’re probably not trying to convince you to head to the auto dealership right this very second, it’s still worth noting a recent Rocket Fuel study suggesting that these ads don’t necessarily drive sales.
Anyway, getting back to Super Bowl photos, you can read part one of the report on the Chute site and part two on the Ditto site.
Oh, and like I mentioned, there’s a lot of data out there today. The Wall Street Journal has a pretty good roundup.