5 ways to boost Super Bowl search visibility without paying $10 million a minute

Super Bowl 51 will be the biggest event for online view­er­ship of all time and that kind of inter­est means there are plen­ty of oppor­tu­ni­ties for brands and agen­cies that don’t have Super Bowl ads of their own.

Lisa Lacy By Lisa Lacy. Join the discussion » 0 comments

In Amer­i­ca – and increas­ing­ly around the world – the Super Bowl is a huge moment in sports and adver­tis­ing.

To wit: A recent study from YouTube found Super Bowl ad view­er­ship out­side the US has grown over 28x on the plat­form since 2008 – with the UK, Cana­da and Rus­sia com­ing in as the top coun­tries for 2016 view­er­ship.

Sum total, the top 20 Super Bowl ads from the last nine years have gen­er­at­ed 440 mil­lion min­utes of watch time. And mil­lions more when you fac­tor in all the oth­er ads — and all the oth­er Super Bowls.


What’s more, tru­ly icon­ic ads con­tin­ue to live on long past the year in which they aired. For exam­ple, Old Spice’s The Man Your Man Could Smell Like from 2010, Ram’s Farmer from 2013 and GoPro and Red Bull’s Red Bull Stratos – The Full Sto­ry from 2014 gen­er­at­ed over 5 mil­lion com­bined views in 2016 for a total of more than 92.5 mil­lion life­time views, YouTube added.

Social video mea­sure­ment firm Vis­i­ble Mea­sures agreed that brands that suc­cess­ful­ly cap­ture con­sumer atten­tion on Super Bowl Sun­day see envi­able results, like Axe’s Find Your Mag­ic, which had a True Reach, or view­er­ship on all plat­forms, of 36 mil­lion and result­ed in a 45% increase in pur­chase con­sid­er­a­tion last year.

But here’s the kick­er: Vis­i­ble Mea­sures projects Super Bowl 51 will be the biggest event for online view­er­ship of all time.

And that kind of inter­est means there are plen­ty of oppor­tu­ni­ties for brands and agen­cies that don’t have Super Bowl ads of their own, too.

Here are 5 tips for how adver­tis­ers can increase their Super Bowl search vis­i­bil­i­ty, whether they have bud­gets to cov­er $10 mil­lion a minute or not.

Think outside the Super Bowl search box

It’s a fact: Con­sumers search for Super Bowl con­tent. And, per Google, that includes top­ics like recipes, food, appar­el, teams and weath­er.

Bing, too, has found search­es for Super Bowl par­ty ideas start to rise after the con­fer­ence cham­pi­onships and peak just before the Super Bowl. As a result, Bing rec­om­mends adver­tis­ers use Enhanced Sitelinks to guide con­sumers to spe­cif­ic game-day pages for recipes or ideas.

That’s right: Any brand can cap­i­tal­ize on Super Bowl fever by cre­at­ing rel­e­vant con­tent.

For exam­ple, if you run a lifestyle web­site, include Super Bowl par­ty recipes,” said Brock Mur­ray, COO of seo­plus+. “If you own a car­pet clean­ing com­pa­ny, give tips for get­ting buf­fa­lo chick­en dip out of car­pet or fur­ni­ture.”

In par­tic­u­lar, writ­ing AMP con­tent that ties into the most buzz­wor­thy, search-wor­thy key­words will help – par­tic­u­lar­ly on mobile as view­ers will be sec­ond screen­ing dur­ing the game, Mur­ray not­ed.

That’s because view­ers aren’t just search­ing for par­tic­u­lars about the game itself. They also want infor­ma­tion about count­less tan­gen­tial top­ics like the half­time show, the ads and the TV show that will air direct­ly after the game, Mur­ray said. That gives savvy brands an oppor­tu­ni­ty to cap­i­tal­ize if they are cre­ative and zero in on the right top­ics.

This is [also] the first year Google is pri­or­i­tiz­ing mobile index­ing,” Mur­ray said. “[I’m] real­ly excit­ed to see how this affects the index­ing of time­ly, rel­e­vant con­tent in the organ­ic search results, not just news results or the AMP carousel.”

In oth­er words, if your con­tent best answers con­sumer ques­tions about relat­ed Super Bowl top­ics, the odds are good you can har­ness some decent expo­sure.

Raise the bar overall

The Super Bowl is a unique moment because ads have his­tor­i­cal­ly been of a high­er qual­i­ty and con­sumers are more open to them as a result.

The Super Bowl is amaz­ing because it’s the one time peo­ple actu­al­ly want to see ads. Some peo­ple care more about the ads than the game or the half­time show. There are some lessons here,” Mur­ray said. “Even if you don’t adver­tise in the Super Bowl at this time of year, peo­ple are hun­gry for ads that are fun­ny, provoca­tive and start a con­ver­sa­tion.”

In oth­er words, the Super Bowl should serve as a reminder that con­sumers don’t mind adver­tis­ing if they see cre­ative, rel­e­vant ads.

Boost, target – and even steal clicks

In addi­tion, Mur­ray sug­gest­ed run­ning a lim­it­ed-time AdWords or Face­book cam­paign to draw atten­tion this time of year.

With online adver­tis­ing, you can tar­get a pre­cise audi­ence that will actu­al­ly con­vert,” he said.

Allie Vadas, PPC direc­tor at Jel­ly­fish, also rec­om­mend­ed brands with Super Bowl cat­e­go­ry pres­ences, such as beer, cars and food, run YouTube dis­cov­ery ad cam­paigns to make sure their brands are show­ing up when con­sumers are search­ing for Super Bowl com­mer­cials.

Bing research con­firms Super Bowl com­mer­cials prompt search – and any­one can take advan­tage

We found that brand­ed search vol­ume can increase up to 98% for an adver­tis­er with a Super Bowl com­mer­cial. How­ev­er, adver­tis­ers may not be tak­ing advan­tage of that extra traf­fic – up to 56% of SRPVs had no impres­sions from the adver­tised brand,” Bing said. “That means there’s an oppor­tu­ni­ty for com­peti­tors to sneak in and steal clicks. Adver­tis­ers need to strength­en their key­word cov­er­age and enhance their bid­ding strat­e­gy to defend their posi­tion and cap­ture more clicks.”

Think local

But brands and agen­cies aren’t lim­it­ed to con­tent and PPC.

In fact, Vadas rec­om­mend­ed brands that are locat­ed in and/or have a con­nec­tion to the cities in which the teams come from or where the game is being played deploy search cam­paigns that relate to what­ev­er con­sumers may be search­ing for in those regions.

For exam­ple, if you are a Hous­ton-based busi­ness [this year], get­ting hyper­local around the sta­di­um to tar­get peo­ple with your ads across the web would increase vis­i­bil­i­ty to those users who are in your mar­ket,” Vadas added.

Ready your social media war room, tune in and see what happens

Vadas also point­ed to the infa­mous black­out tweet from Oreo – per­haps the gold stan­dard of real-time mar­ket­ing – and rec­om­mend­ed brands make sure their search and mar­ket­ing teams are ready, will­ing and able to deploy in-the-moment social con­tent, so they can cap­i­tal­ize on events as they hap­pen.

Peo­ple who then go to search for con­text and more infor­ma­tion about that event, your brand will be there,” she added.

Lisa Lacy

Written by Lisa Lacy

Lisa is a senior features writer for Inked. She also previously covered digital marketing for Incisive Media. Her background includes editorial positions at Dow Jones, the Financial Times, the Huffington Post, AOL, Amazon, Hearst, Martha Stewart Living and the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund.

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