Another Super Bowl has come and gone. The ads have come and gone. But this year’s ads won’t be as memorable, according to the hashtags.
Hashtags were in 45% of Super Bowl ads, compared to 50% last year. Twitter and Facebook led the social media way, though neither were mentioned that much. A website called MarketingLand counted 60 different ads between the first kickoff and the end of the game (pre-game festivities weren’t counted). Of those 60, 27 had hashtags, 21 had their ad’s website, 3 had their Twitter and 3 had their Facebook posts. This is the lowest count since MarketLand started conducting such research in 2012. That year, only 12% ads had hashtags of them. Of course, four years ago, many of us were still trying to figure this social media thing out. Movies went heavy on the social media. The main movies advertised were Jungle Book, Independence Day Resurgence, and X-Men Apocalypse. They had at least one hashtag, URL, or social media symbol. Another movie, Jason Bourne of the Bourne Identity franchise had none of those. In fact, the majority had none of the those. The rest only had one: either a hashtag, URL, or social media siting. Only one ad, T-Mobile, had a hashtag, URL and social media siting.
So are hashtags a trend in commercial that is fading? I don’t know. But I know this year’s Super Bowl commercials left a lot to be desired. Look at the Doritos commercial. Are they going to convince me Doritos are so good they will make a pregnant woman give birth early? What a joke. And don’t even get me started on those prescription drug commercials they had. Haven’t the pharmaceutical companies saturated and invaded the advertising market enough? Maybe social media companies were just ashamed to be a part of that. I was ashamed at looking at some of those commercials. Is the ad hashtag trend winding down? Or were the Super Bowl commercials just that bad?