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Super Bowl

Super Bowl 50 was the second most cluttered Super Bowl in history for advertising

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By Tony Connelly, Sports Marketing Reporter

February 9, 2016 | 3 min read

Super Bowl 50 was the second most cluttered Super Bowl in history as measured by ad time, according to new data released by Kantar Media.

Super bowl 2016 ads

Super bowl 2016 ads

When promotional spots from CBS and the NFL are taken into account, the broadcast of the game featured 49 minutes, 35 seconds of advertising which made up 22 per cent of the total broadcast time. This year’s game was only surpassed by the 2013 Super Bowl which had an unusually high number of ads due to delays caused by a blackout.

Excluding the promotional messages aired by CBS and the NFL, there were a total of 63 in-game spots aired by 53 different advertisers from 46 unique parent company owners.

Anheuser-Busch InBev was the top parent company in the game with 3:30 minutes of ad time across its five ads. Fiat Chrysler and Pepsico were tied for second place with 2:00 minutes of ads each over two different ads.

Of the 62 in-game ads from brand advertisers, 17 were one minute or longer which ranks as the third highest total ever but still a sharp drop from the prior two years. The surfeit of longer announcements meant that many commercial pods contained just two units from paying sponsors, which potentially gave each ad more visibility to the audience.

Auto manufacturers emerged as having the biggest presence of all ad categories in the game, accounting for 11 spots and 9:00 minutes of ad time. Financial was the second largest category with six units and 3:45 of messages. Beer advertising, all from Anheuser Busch InBev, and Movies were close behind. These four categories represented 57% of the 39 minutes, 15 seconds of total ad time from paying advertisers.

The Super Bowl generates plenty of second-screen activity during the game and marketers have accelerated their efforts to attract and engage multi-platform consumers.

According to Kantar Media’s analysis of paid ads shown during the game, hashtags again surpassed URLs as the most popular call to action mechanism. 52 per cent of paid ads (27 of 62) contained a hashtag as compared to 43 per cent with a URL (23 of 62).

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