Super Bowl advertisers may not have received a big direct sales bump from their highly watched ads, but the big game itself was the most talked about on social ever, suggesting the huge upside social integration could bring future Super Bowl advertisers.

No direct, immediate uplift in sales that could be attributed to Super Bowl TV advertising befell advertisers, despite the pricetag of $4.5 million per 30 second spot, a record high. However, the uptick in social activity pointed to advertisers? efforts to engage younger viewers and others who engaged around the game via less expensive channels. The results suggest that advertisers could focus their advertising efforts elsewhere in the future as mobile affords a cheaper alternative. 

?As the numbers came back from Sunday's game, this was the most talked about Super Bowl on social ever,? said Robert Jones, director, research and insights at Rocket Fuel. ?On Facebook alone, 65 million people created 265 million posts, an increase of 50 million people last year. 

?We also saw a rise in real-time marketing with more brands publishing content on Twitter during the game, 31 this year versus 26 last year. 

?Social integration clearly has a huge upside, but as with the TV spots, measuring the effectiveness of that integration and optimizing appropriately is key,? he said. 

For the same cost as a 30-second Super Bowl TV spot, digital advertisers could instead buy an 11-day takeover of the YouTube homepage, a 9-day takeover of Turner Networks? affiliated Web pages, which includes TNT.tv, CNN.com, NBA.com and AdultSwim.com, 45 days of standalone ads on Facebook?s logout page and 37 days of sponsored trending on Twitter.

 

While the ads that aired before a vast global audience contained few mobile calls to action, mobile usage during the event soared. 

?Our current follow-up research shows as much as a three times increase in bid requests for some mobile devices during the 2015 Super Bowl compared to last year,? Mr. Jones said. ?While a mobile call-to-action may improve brand engagement, it's still difficult to say how this would impact direct sales for products that are purchased offline or have a long purchase cycle, such as the automotive brands we examined in the study.?

As expected, fewer automotive advertisers bought ads during the game, to focus on other initiatives and priorities.

?There's been little evidence from a sales standpoint to suggest that auto brands see a tangible sales benefit from advertising during the Super Bowl, especially when it comes to their digital ads, though these often have little in common with the Super Bowl spots from a messaging standpoint,? Mr. Jones said. 

?Without demonstrable sales results to correlate with the Super Bowl, it?s a real possibility that other brands may consider alternative options next year as well, though those brands that do advertise will hopefully work on having a more cohesive messaging strategy across all media.?

The game featured a disconnect between the Super Bowl messaging and the messaging in display and mobile advertising from the same brand in ads running concurrently. Auto advertisers that use similar or related messaging across multiple formats and media would be expected to see better results.

Rocket Fuel looked at each advertiser who advertised during the Super Bowl and who partnered with Rocket Fuel both before and after the game in 2012, 2013, and 2014. It then compared their online sales performance in the weeks before the Super Bowl to their conversion rates after the event. 

It then compared these changes in conversion rates to those for similar advertisers that did not advertise during the Super Bowl. 

?When we started our research, we just assumed that we'd see a lift in display performance for auto brands that advertised during the Super Bowl,? Mr. Jones said. 

?That assumption was wrong, which underlines how important it is to measure these effects and continually re-evaluate the methods being employed.?