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Hashtags were in 30% of Super Bowl 51 ads, down significantly from 45% last year. More ads used URLs than hashtags for the first time since Marketing Land has measured them, 41% in all. Twitter barely beat Facebook and Instagram as the most-mentioned social network, though neither was explicitly mentioned often.
The statistics are from our sixth annual Hashtag Bowl count of hashtags, social media mentions and URLs in ads shown during Super Bowl LI.
We tabulated only nationally-shown ads and only those shown between kickoff until the game ended. See further below for our full rundown and further notes on this.
The Count
The scoreboard at the top of this article has our final count, but here’s the summary with percentages, based on a total of 66 ads reviewed.
- Total national ads (kickoff to end-of-game): 66
- Hashtags in ads: 20 total, in 30% of ads overall
- URLs in ads: 27 total, in 41% of ads overall
- Twitter in ads: 5 total, 8& of ads overall
- Facebook: 4 total, 6% of ads overall
- Instagram:4 total, 6% of ads overall
Below, the frequency of both hashtag and URL use as Marketing Land has tracked over recent years:
Hashtag usage in Super Bowl ads hit a peak of 57% in 2014. It was 50% for 2013 and 2015. The lowest usage was 12% in 2012, when Marketing Land first began tracking.
The real surprise this year was URL use overtaking hashtags. Marketing Land first began measuring URLs in 2014. They consistently stayed below hashtag usage until overtaking it this year.
For those interested in past years, our past counts: 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015 and 2016.
Hashtags remain plentiful
While hashtags dropped from previous levels, they were certainly in many ads — beginning with the third ad aired after kick-off by Avocados from Mexico with the #AvoSecrets hashtag:
Here’s Skittles with another example of an ad including a hashtag:
Twitter leads Facebook, but social mentions remain small
As with previous years, mentions of particular social networks was tiny. T-Mobile aired four ads that were responsible for most mentions, since those ads had logos for Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Here are examples of two of them:
It was Wonderful Pistachios that gave Twitter the nudge ahead, mentioning only that social network in its ad and calling out its Twitter account:
84 Lumber pushes people to site — and fails
Perhaps the most engaging use — and also biggest fail — of an element in a Super Bowl ad was by 84 Lumber. The company aired the story of immigrants trying to enter the United States, one that stopped short of the ending, with the enticement to view the rest at the journey84.com site:
Unfortunately, demand swamped the site, perhaps because 84 Lumber wasn’t scaled up enough to handle it. It was down for many for nearly 30 minutes after the ad aired. On Twitter, the company apologized and directed people to its YouTube channel.
Running order of ads
Below is the full list of ads included in our survey, in order of appearance. Any hashtags used are listed. If an ad had a URL, Twitter or Facebook mention, there’s a 1 shown. If not, there’s a zero.
| Order | Brand | Hashtag | URL | |||
| 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | ||
| 2 | Michelin | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | |
| 3 | Avocados From Mexico | #AvoSecrets | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 4 | Mobile Strike | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | |
| 5 | H&R Block | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | |
| 6 | Skittles | #TasteTheRainbow | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 7 | Busch | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | |
| 8 | American Petroleum Institute | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | |
| 9 | GoDaddy | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | |
| 10 | Lifewtr | #MoreInspired | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 11 | Intel | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | |
| 12 | Airbnb | #weaccept | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 13 | World Of Tanks | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | |
| 14 | Yellow Tail | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | |
| 15 | Pirates of the Carreabean | #PiratesLife | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 16 | Wonderful Pistachios | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | |
| 17 | Buick | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | |
| 18 | Logan | #Logan | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 19 | T-Mobile | #UnlimitedMoves | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| 20 | Honda | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | |
| 21 | Bai | #BaiBaiBai | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 22 | Transformers | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | |
| 23 | Tide/NFL | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | |
| 24 | Sprint | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | |
| 25 | Coca Cola | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | |
| 26 | The Handmaid’s Tale | #HandmaidsTale | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 27 | WeatherTech | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | |
| 28 | Febreze | #BathroomBreak | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 29 | Alfa Romeo | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | |
| 30 | Michelob | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | |
| 31 | Turbo Tax | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | |
| 32 | Lexus | #Lexus | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 33 | Fate of the Furious | #F8 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 34 | Squarespace | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | |
| 35 | Wendy’s | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | |
| 36 | Toyota | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | |
| 37 | Tiffany | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | |
| 38 | 84 Lumber | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | |
| 39 | Audi | #DriveProgress | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 40 | Mr Clean | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | |
| 41 | Snickers | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | |
| 42 | Budweiser | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | |
| 43 | T-Mobile | #BagOfUnlimited | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| 44 | Persil | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | |
| 45 | Kia | #SmarterWay | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 46 | It’s a 10 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | |
| 47 | A Cure for Wellness | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | |
| 48 | Evony | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | |
| 49 | Baywatch | #BeBaywatch | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 50 | Alfa Romeo | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | |
| 51 | T-Mobile | #TheSafeWordisUnlimited | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| 52 | Wix | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | |
| 53 | Amazon Echo (x3) | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | |
| 54 | Turkish Airlines | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | |
| 55 | King’s Hawaiian | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | |
| 56 | Bud Light | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | |
| 57 | T-Mobile | #TheSafeWordisUnlimited | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| 58 | Nintendo Switch | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | |
| 59 | Mercedes | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | |
| 60 | Alfa Romeo | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | |
| 61 | Sprite | #WannaSprite | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 62 | KFC | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | |
| 63 | The Handmaid’s Tale | #HandmaidsTale | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 64 | Sprint | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | |
| 65 | Proactiv | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | |
| 66 | SoFi | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | |
| Total | 66 | 20 | 27 | 5 | 4 | 4 |
| Percent | 30% | 41% | 8% | 6% | 6% |
We tried to count only ads that were nationally shown, as best we could, viewing from Los Angeles. Promos for shows on FOX or from the NFL were not included, nor were very short 15 second ads for The Walking Dead and Fiji Water.
We did include a joint NFL/Tide ad because it was more than an NFL promo. We combined the count for three Amazon Echo ads into one, because all were very short and shown within the same block with other ads.
We also included some repeat ads shown after the unprecedented overtime period began. Overtime ads began with 63 onward.
Stay tuned for more. Now that the hashtags have gone out in all these Super Bowl ads, Marketing Land will be churning through the data from various parties over the coming weeks to help readers understand which ads and campaigns were big hits and which were not.
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