While the country debates whether the infamous Super Bowl blackout helped the 49ers rustle the Ravens’ feathers in the second half, the hiccup had one surefire effect. It drove hordes of people sitting in front of a TV set to take to Twitter. With tallies now in, more than 200,000 tweets were dedicated to the power outage alone on Super Bowl Sunday. But the blackout was just one example of how prevalent a force Twitter can be during televised events. The social net had a record breaking night of 24.1 million tweets and generated 100,000-200,000 tweets per minute every time something memorable happened during the game.
It’s not out of the blue that Twitter acquired Bluefin Labs this week, a firm that provides audience data to advertisers, agencies and TV networks. Twitter nicely tied the affair together with its Super Bowl performance.
“As millions of people around the world experienced during Sunday’s Super Bowl broadcast, Twitter is an amazing complement to live television viewing. We look forward to working with Bluefin and our partners in the television industry to make the experience of Twitter and television even better,” it said in a statement.
Having Bluefin under its wing is meant to help Twitter broaden its ad portfolio, and no-doubt some level of TV tie-ins is part of the strategy. From a brand standpoint, there was already plenty of that on display during the Super Bowl. According to Marketing Land’s Matt McGee, Twitter was mentioned in 26 of 52 Super Bowl TV spots. Facebook mustered four mentions, followed by one each for Instagram and YouTube. The love affair was two-way. Consulting agency Whispr Group reported that ad-related tweets drove 30 percent of tweets deemed relevant to the Super Bowl.
It all seems like a testament to the effectiveness of the platform as a social net for simultaneous TV viewing. It has few bells and whistles, but that simplicity allows for immediacy, acceptable brevity and, at times, forced wit that transcends cooked messaging. That’s what advertisers are catching on to, and it could be Twitter will have a strategy to monetize that by the next Super Bowl.
Source: CNET
