Candy Brands Gain Share Of Voice On Super Bowl Searches

Three candy brands are among those making their mark on Super Bowl-related searches this year–and one isn’t even advertising during the game. Snickers, M&Ms and Skittles are each garnering impression share with ads on Google for Super Bowl related queries, according to monitoring firm, BrandVerity, which has been monitoring terms for us since the beginning of last week.

Skittles has started promoting its teaser ad on Google, and still has a relatively low share of voice, though that may change as we get closer to game day. The candy brand decided to join the fray for the first time this year, and its entry is certainly sweeter with Seattle’s Marshawn Lynch in the game. The ad campaign itself, though, is not Lynch-related.

Snickers is teasing its Brady Bunch spoof starring Danny Trejo as Marsha. The ads appear to link to YouTube channel, but we’ve found they often link to the brand’s Facebook page instead. Snickers has said if the teaser gains 2.5 million social mentions, it will release the full ad early. Snickers held 4.6 percent share of voice.

M&Ms isn’t running a TV ad this year during the game, but it has been using Google to promote its custom team-themed candies for the big game. MyMMs.com had captured 3.1 percent share of voice.

Last year, just one candy brand–Nestle’s Butterfinger Cups–appeared on BrandVerity’s list of top impression earners around Super Bowl-related keywords.

Early leader, Doritos continued to hold strong with 20.9 percent impression share through Monday for its Crash the Super Bowl campaign.

Perennial forerunners, Bud Light and Budweiser has been active in the mix as well, garnering 13.3 percent share of voice. Budweiser is one of the only brands using a hashtag (#BestBuds) in its search ads. Instead of spelling out “Follow us on Twitter” as most advertisers do in their sitelinks, the ads simply use @Budweiser to link to Twitter. The beer brand is also promoting its contest to win tickets to the game.

Mophie, which specializes in charging solutions for mobile devices, is another newcomer to the Super Bowl. It’s paid search ads seem to be shying away from proclaiming affiliation with the Super Bowl–opting for “Game Day” instead–and while the ad links to it’s Over Time sweepstakes landing page, you would never know about the contest from the ad itself. (Mophie will give 10,000 entrants $100 gift cards if the game goes into overtime).AdGooroo has also been monitoring paid search impression share on a number of Super Bowl terms. Over the past weekend (Jan 24-26), Toyota’s Lexus brand was the top impression share earner with 10.2 percent.

With Super Bowl TV ads costing upwards of $4.5 million, it’s surprising to see how many brands don’t extend their campaigns to search. Website firms, Wix.com and GoDaddy, are among those not even running brand-related campaigns on Google. A search today for “godaddy super bowl” triggered an ad for Host Gator.

About The Author

Ginny Marvin

Ginny Marvin was formerly Third Door Media’s Editor-in-Chief, running the day-to-day editorial operations across all publications and overseeing paid media coverage. Ginny Marvin writes about paid digital advertising and analytics news and trends for Search Engine Land, Marketing Land and MarTech Today. With more than 15 years of marketing experience, Ginny has held both in-house and agency management positions. She can be found on Twitter as @ginnymarvin.