39% of Super Bowl ads had a domain name, 30% had a hashtag while 39% had NONE

I did some of my own research on the Super Bowl ads based on the Marketing Land statistics and it quite interesting:

39% of all Super Bowl ads this year had a domain name shown, 30% had a hashtag (or social media network or handle) shown while 39% of the ads displayed neither a URL nor a hashtag. Most of the companies that didn’t display a URL own the exact match .com domain. All except 2 of them!

Marketing Land measured how many ads shown during Super Bowl 51 used a domain name and how many used a hashtag and published the results. But I made some research of my own. (see below the image)

Hashtags in Super Bowl ads slipped to 30% in 2017 and were overtaken by domain name use in 39%. Hashtags were in less than one-third of ads, down from a high of 57% three years ago and 45% last year.

More ads used domain names (URLs) than hashtags for the first time since Marketing Land has measured them that was 6 years ago. Marketing Land counted only ads shown between kickoff and the end of the game. Twitter barely beat Facebook and Instagram as the most-mentioned social network, though neither was explicitly mentioned often.

Here’s the summary with percentages, based on a total of 66 ads reviewed from Marketing Land:

• Total national ads (kickoff to end-of-game): 66
• Hashtags in ads: 20 total, in 30 percent of ads overall
• URLs in ads: 26 total, in 39 percent of ads overall
• Twitter in ads: 5 total, 8 percent of ads overall
• Facebook: 4 total, 6 percent of ads overall
• Instagram: 4 total, 6 percent of ads overall

Marketing Land first began measuring URLs in 2014 (and hashtags in 2012). Domain names consistently stayed below hashtag usage until overtaking it this year.

MY RESEARCH

The most important statistic was that 39% of all ads assumed that you either know their domain name (like Google) or they don’t actually need one shown (because they operate mainly offline like KFC):

• 26 of the 66 of all ads didn’t have any mention of a domain name, hashtag or social media network. (39% overall)
• 19 of the 26 ads that included a domain name had no other mention of a hashtag (or social media). (29% overall)
• 14 of the 20 ads that included a hashtag (or social media) had no other mention of a domain name. (21% overall)
• 7 of all 66 ads had multiple signals, meaning they had URLs and hashtags shown. (11% overall)

And indeed, out of the 26 companies that decided to not display anything on their add most own the exact match .com domain name. All except 2 of them:

• Mobile Strike (MobileStrike.com is for sale while the game uses mobilestrikeapp.com)
• Yellow Tail (YellowTail.com is parked while the wine uses yellowtailwine.com)

And the award for the worst mention of a domain name, hashtag of social media handle goes to Wonderful Pistachios. That is because they chose to only display a Twitter handle @ElephantErnie. And that is not even their main Twitter handle that is @getcrackin and have been using for years. At this time @getcrackin has 41k followers while @ElephantErnie has 4,183. Oh well…

Click here to see how MVP.com and Goat.com were used (while not on an ad) during the Super Bowl.