Forbes: Marvel's Teaser Ads Put The 'Super' In SBLIII's Social Metrics

By Rob Salkowitz, Forbes

"Digital Share of Voice" measures how much of the online conversation a specific piece of content commands at a given moment, and it's an absolutely essential metric for brands trying to break through a noisy media environment to engage audiences, rather than simply "reach" them. Media environments don't get much noisier than the hype surrounding the Super Bowl, where advertisers spent a total of $382 million for in-game media, according to Kantar Media's preliminary estimate. And victories in the "digital share of voice" category don't come any bigger or clearer than this year's game-day performance by Marvel Entertainment and its two spots promoting the upcoming Captain Marvel and Avengers: Endgame features.

 According to the metrics platform iSpot.tv, Marvel's two 30 second trailers finished in the top 3 in whole-day share-of-voice on game day, with Endgame commanding a whopping 26%, or more than a quarter of all online activity, and Captain Marvel landing at 7.25%, just a shade behind Verizon's emotional tribute to first responders, The Team That Would Be Here (7.5%).

Endgame earned 5.34 million views on social media, good for nearly 335 million social impressions as of Monday morning. That's nearly six times the 61 million impressions the spot got on television. Even more impressive were the number of social actions - likes, retweets, comments, upvotes - that the spot received, since social actions are indicative of the kind of high audience engagement that sponsors crave. Endgame generated nearly 600,000 social actions across the platforms measured by iSpot (YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and search engines) , easily tops among all advertisers and more than the next 20 spots combined. Marvel's post of the trailer on Instragram was especially effective, with over 35,000 actions on more than 123,000 views, according to the metrics site Shareablee, which measures content engagement across platforms.

Captain Marvel took a distant second place in social actions with over 173,000, but that number was also more than the next ten on the list combined. Captain Marvel also earned nearly 1.2 million online views and 174,000 social impressions. The only spots ranking higher on pure social reach were Amazon's Not Everything Makes the Cutspot (#1 with over 621 million, over twice as many as the next runner up), Avocados from Mexico's Top Dog (370 million), Endgame at nearly 335 million, and the Bud Light/Game of Thrones Jousting Match crossover, with about 223 million.

 Taken together, the two movie trailers made Marvel the top brand with an incredible 33% digital share of voice on 771,626 social actions and well over half a million social impressions. Social reach extended Marvel's return on their $10 million investment in two 30-second TV spots by 4x that audience that saw the commercials play during the game.

In fairness to other advertisers, Marvel's dominance here is not entirely surprising. Marvel produces content that billions of people around the world love to consume and discuss, and the upcoming movies - which both tie in to long-running plotlines and last year's Avengers: Infinity War cliffhanger - are inherently the subject of fan interest and intrigue. Any clues that Marvel chose to drop during the Big Game were obviously going to be the subject of a lot of online conversation.

The other sponsors who ranked highly in this category had the greater burden of getting ordinary consumers excited enough about mobile phone service, light beer, videogames or automobiles to make noise on social media. The "best of the rest" in terms of digital share of voice, according to iSpot.tv, were:

• #2: Verizon (11.42% total brand share of voice, including 7.5% for its Team that Wouldn't Be Here spot)
• #3 Microsoft X-Box (5.8%), on the back of its empowering We All Win spot, about accessible controllers for physically challenged gamers.
• #4 Amazon, with an aggregate 4.9% SOV over 4 airings of its Alexa spots, and that gigantic social footprint.
• #5 T-Mobile, with a 3.72% digital SOV over 6 different airings, with the top creative being Lyfted.
• You have to get down to #6 to find the first non-tech, communications or entertainment brand. That would be Bud Light, was a 3.26% digital SOV, mostly around the Jousting Match creative.

Considering Marvel's super-engaging success on social media, the ads fell flat according to a different measurement. TVision , an analytics firm that can measure how much attention viewers are giving to spots as they are running on the screen, did not rate either of Marvel's trailers in the top 10.

According to the company's data, the ads that captured eyeballs in the room were Doritos, NFL's "100-year game," Bud Light's "Joust," Olay's "Killer Skin" featuring Sarah Michelle Gellar, and the Pringles "Sad Device" spot. TVision rated Captain Marvel at just over their baseline average, at 100.3, and the Avengers trailer at just under, 96.5, in terms of eyes on screen. I guess everyone else was too busy chatting on their devices!