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Patriots have more online visitors, but Giants fans run up web stats

During the run up to the playoffs in December 2011, the Patriots had 644,000 unique visitors to their official website, topping the Giants’ 574,000 visitors. However, Giants fans were more engaged when visiting their team’s website, viewing nearly twice as many pages (17 page views per person) compared to Patriots visitors, and spending over 10 minutes each on average.

Super Bowl buzz: Giants fans cheer more for team, Tom Brady is MVP of social media

Fans’ excitement throughout the playoffs carried over to social media. The Giants had more buzz about their team each week, with a 59 percent share of buzz compared to the Patriots’ 41 percent of buzz volume on blogs, message boards/forums, public posts on Twitter and Facebook and online news posts.  But Patriots’ quarterback Tom Brady surpassed Giants QB Eli Manning, with nearly double the amount of buzz.

Cost of an Ad
The Super Bowl investment is economically resilient, remaining relatively stable despite fluctuations in the primetime average—and rising consistently over the past five years despite a rocky economy.

Big Spenders: Automotive Makes a Comeback
2011 was the year of the auto comeback. Spending on automotive ads far surpassed other categories and more than doubled versus previous years. Nine different auto brands took center field in the commercial breaks, versus an average of two to four brands in years prior. Creative quality also improved in 2011, with an unprecedented four auto spots making Nielsen’s annual Most-Liked list. Chevrolet’s “Wild Ride” garnered the distinction of being the most watched ad of all time, with an estimated 119,628,000 viewers watching its Super Bowl airing. This year, Chevy is breaking ground again with the Game Time app, which will leverage consumers’ simultaneous cross-screen behavior and reinforce branding from traditional TV advertisements.

Top Five Super Bowl Advertising Categories (2007-2011)
Year Over Year Spend Breakdown (in millions)

Other Spend Trends

• Beer: Bud Light and Budweiser have dominated the turf when if comes to Super Bowl beer advertising over the past five years. Consumers have come to expect the fleet of creatives, including the iconic Clydesdale ads. In 2010 and 2011, other brands like Michelob and Stella Artois came to play. What can viewers expect this year?
• Motion Picture: Movies have a strong presence in Super Bowl ad lineup, as studios capitalize on the massive audience to parade their best bets for the year. From 2008-2011, at least one of the top five highest grossing films had a slot in the Super Bowl line up. Motion picture ads increased after 2008 and have had a consistently strong presence during the game since, reaching ten ads in last year’s game.
• Regular Soft Drink: While fewer Soft Drink ads have traditionally aired during the Super Bowl compared to other categories, they make an impact by creating minute-long spots.
• Tortilla Chips: Tortilla Chips have emerged as a highly anticipated category of ads, led by the fan created ads. Last year, three Doritos ads made Nielsen’s Most Liked and Most Remembered list.

And an oft-discussed quarterback can lead (or follow) his team to buzz dominance as well. Half of the top 10 quarterbacks by N-Score were on the top 10 teams with the most buzz; however, there are a number of players and teams where no connection appears. Tony Romo garnered slightly higher than the median quarterback buzz (1.8%) while the Dallas Cowboys were one of the most buzzed about teams with 5.8 percent of all online buzz mentions. Incidentally, the Cowboys also had the most unique visitors to their website on average.

High awareness of a player—as captured through the N-Score—can also be indicative of a player’s buzz. For players like the Eagles’ Michael Vick and the Steelers’ Ben Roethlisberger, their awareness and buzz are both high—yet their N-Score, which takes into account traits such as likeability, down-to-earth and talented—reflects negative public reaction to their activity off the field (13 and 16, respectively). Besides Matt Hasselbeck, all of the top 10 quarterbacks by N-Score received high online buzz.

Players with lesser awareness can also become buzz generators online. Alex Smith and Mark Sanchez, who were nationally known by just four and 16 percent of the population, respectively, had a tremendous amount of player buzz—higher than three percent of all quarterback buzz. Sanchez may benefit from his association with the Jets, the NFL’s most buzzed about team.

“Buzz for the NFL has ramped up this summer as the lockout-shortened off season created a flurry of trades and free agent signings that gave fans plenty to talk about. We’re closely watching to see how all of this excitement in August translates to TV ratings in September. Roughly 18 million Americans tuned in to nationally broadcast NFL games, on average, during the 2010-2011 season,” said Stephen Master, Vice President, Sports for Nielsen.

Masters continued, “It will be interesting to see how fans respond to controversial players, such as Michael Vick, this season. His strong performance on the field was rewarded with a $100 million contract, but he’s still a polarizing figure nationally with a higher than average number of Americans expressing dislike for him, according to the N-Score.”

Among NFL teams, the NY Jets generated the most online buzz during the off-season from blogs, message boards/groups, Twitter, Facebook, and online news posts. “America’s Team,” the Dallas Cowboys continue to generate national interest in online discussions, although they were topped by their rivals, the Philadelphia Eagles, who led NFC teams and were second in overall pre-season buzz. The NY Giants, and their regional rival, the New England Patriots, round out the top five teams with the most pre-season buzz.

An abbreviated off-season due to the NFL lockout sparked a flurry of free-agent signings and trades of popular players, and generated considerable online buzz among sports fans.  Looking at players who have changed teams ahead of the 2011 season, Reggie Bush received the most buzz during the off-season with 194k mentions. Comparing buzz about NFL players who joined new teams through free-agency or trade in recent weeks, Plaxico Burress led this group of players with more than 13k mentions during the week of July 31 – August 6, followed by Reggie Bush, Nnamdi Asomugha, Chad Ochocinco, and Donovan McNabb.

One in four active web users in the US visited sites in the Sports category, which amounts to 42.5 million Americans during the most recent week (ending July 31).  Compared to weeks during the off-season, the NFL’s network of sites more than doubled their audience, a 258 percent increase in unique US visitors during the first full week after the NFL lockout ended.

As US sports fans go online for the latest news and stats, Yahoo’s network of sports sites was their top destination during the week of July 31. ESPN.com and FoxSports.com websites were also popular destinations for US sports fans in this most recent week. Historically the months of August and September are the busiest for sports sites, so this may provide another preview of the season to come!

According to Nielsen, nearly 48 minutes of paid television advertising (including the pre-game kick-off) ran during the 2010 Super Bowl. Last year’s game drew an estimated $219 million in advertising, trumping total regular season ad spend for most other major sports last year, excluding football. With sold out ad inventory for this year’s Super Bowl and such a diverse and massive pack of consumers expected to tune in, which advertisers stand the best chance of capturing the audience and getting the greatest return on their investment?

In a recent online survey of 500 U.S. consumers, Nielsen revealed that one in three respondents said they bought a product in the past 12 months based on seeing an ad for the product. Those who said they bought a product based on an ad were more likely to do so for certain product categories more than others. 68 percent of those surveyed said they bought food (CPG) products within the past year after seeing the product advertised, while 36 percent said they were compelled to buy beverages (hot/cold/soft drinks) after seeing an ad.

Ads for health/beauty products (cosmetics, hair products, personal hygiene, etc.) also resonated with more than half (51%) of consumers. In each of these categories, TV ads were cited as the most effective form of advertisement by far. 85 percent, 83 percent and 70 percent of respondents said TV commercials influenced them the most when purchasing beverages, food and health/beauty products, respectively.

This bodes well for three of the top five product categories that advertised in the 2010 Super Bowl and, after an estimated 48.5 million women watched last year’s game, presents a big opportunity for health and beauty companies to expand their reach. However, for longer-term purchases, such as personal finance services and cars, only 10 percent of consumers surveyed said they had bought either of those products based on exposure to an ad. Still, TV was cited as the most influential medium when deciding to purchase a car (32%), financial service (43%), pharmaceuticals (64%) or home electronics (57%).

Cuddly, Funny, Sexy Ads Most Effective in the Big Game
An analysis of Super Bowl ads airing over the past six years (2005-2010) reveals that commercials featuring animals, humor and scantily clad women often show higher resonance among males and females. “Resonance,” one of Nielsen’s “4 Rs” of advertising effectiveness (Reach, Receptivity, Resonance, Reaction), shows how well a campaign generated the desired viewer response to the brand. Nielsen data shows that men, in particular, can recall the brand advertised in beer commercials, while non-fatal violence (ie. people crashing into things or being slapped by each other) and collisions/explosions resonates better with women. Teens and young adults (13-34) are more receptive to funny ads, including those with non-fatal violence, while older viewers (35+) show higher recall for ads that feature animals and beer. Across the board, commercials focusing on automotives, charitable organizations, and football-related content do not resonate as strongly.

N-Score, a new measurement tool from Nielsen developed in collaboration with E-Poll Market Research, an innovative consumer research firm specializing in the evaluation and measurement of celebrities, brands and media properties. The N-Score rates the brand impact of professional athletes and sports personalities to enable advertisers to make strong marketing decisions on commercial endorsements. Currently, N-Score is available for more than 1,000 individuals on both a national basis and 30 local markets. N-Score gauges the effects of positive and negative news about athletes and sports personalities. Polls are fielded regularly as news or events warrant), with data going back eight years. The data can be broken out by age, sex, and demographic compositions to help marketers identify the most effective endorsers to audience segments.

With an N-Score of 262Manning ranked top among playoff quarterbacks, followed by the New Orleans Saints’ Drew Brees (166) and the New England Patriots’ Tom Brady (131). Philadelphia quarterback Michael Vick, the football comeback story of the year, had a national N-Score of just 16, reflecting lingering public displeasure with his conviction on dog fighting charges.

“N-Score represents the latest step in Nielsen’s ongoing commitment to comprehensively measuring consumer engagement and providing advertisers and marketers an important new tool to make more informed and more precise decisions,” said Stephen Master, Vice President, Nielsen Sports. “By combining our research and expertise, which segments consumers by demographic attributes, and E-Poll’s industry-leading surveys about the value of celebrity endorsers, we’ve created a currency by which sporting figures’ effectiveness as endorsers can be measured and trended.”

About N-Score
The N-Score is derived from a model that factors in audience awareness of an athlete, the overall appeal of the athlete and 46 specific personal attributes such as leadership and trustworthiness. The national survey is administered to more than 1,100 people in the U.S. and the sample is representative of the general population based on gender, income, age and education.

According to The Nielsen Sports Media Exposure Index, which measures media exposure on TV and online, the Cowboys were still the most popular NFL team in America last season. Jerry Jones’s franchise earned the top indexed score of 100, far surpassing the runner-up Pittsburgh Steelers who finished with an index of 81.

The Cowboys’ top ranking was boosted by first-place showings in two of the four categories tallied by Nielsen: gross audience during nationally televised games and monthly unique audience to the team web site. The other two categories – local team ratings and total buzz volume – were captured by the Saints and New York Giants, respectively.

Dallas has held the top two spots in each of the last two years. The Steelers moved up from third to second, swapping places with the Giants. The Minnesota Vikings, aided no doubt by the presence and performance of legendary QB Brett Favre,  climbed from 13th place in 2008 to a tie for 4th in the 2009 regular season ranking. The Washington Redskins, meanwhile, dropped from 5th in 2008 to 11th in 2009.

NFC teams dominated the 2009 rankings. Seven of the top 10 teams  represented the conference, while the Steelers, Colts (t-8th) and Patriots (10th) were the only three AFC teams to crack the top third of the list.

Among the two New York teams, the Giants had the most media exposure, ranking 15 spots ahead of the Jets. And even despite drawing 38% lower local market ratings than their Bay Area rivals, the Oakland Raiders were the most popular national brand out of Northern California, ranking two spots ahead of the San Francisco 49ers (25th vs. 27th).

The Nielsen Sports Media Exposure Index measured all 32 NFL teams in four categories during the 2009 regular season: local team ratings, gross national TV audience, online buzz volume, and monthly unique audiences to official team websites. Teams in each category were assigned a score, with the top rank worth 100 points and each subsequent ranking assigned a lower weighted score based its distance from the top. Final team rankings were calculated using the sum of scores across all four categories, and then indexed with the highest total equaling 100.

Nielsen’s NFL Media Exposure Index was recently featured in the Wall Street Journal.

Fourteen percent of home Super Bowl viewers with Internet access browsed the web at least once during the big game, up slightly from last year’s 12%. Additionally, time spent on line for those multitaskers was up from 24 minutes last year to 29 minutes with much of that concurrent time was spent on social networks.

Overall, Google and Facebook were the most visited domains while watching the game. Preliminary analysis of Nielsen’s single-source measurement of Internet and TV, in Convergence Panel and select National People Meter homes, shows that 36% of simultaneous users visited Google.com and 34% visited Facebook.com. Facebook, which was visited during the game by 1 in 20 of all at-home Super Bowl viewers with Internet access, led the most-visited sites in terms of simultaneous time spent, averaging 19 minutes per user.

The growth of simultaneous use, particularly on sites such as Google and Facebook, demonstrates the growing importance of Web interactivity in the television viewing experience. For some time, Nielsen has been discussing and gearing our audience measurement towards how this interactivity could make a positive impact on live television viewership. We expect to see this trend continue to manifest itself in the Winter Olympics and this summer’s FIFA World Cup Soccer event.

• Download  information on Nielsen’s simultaneous measurement of TV and Internet.

Hispanic outreach has been a focus of the NFL’s marketing strategy, and it may be paying off. Hispanic household ratings were up 9%.  About 8.3 million viewers (44% of them female) in U.S. Hispanic households saw the game.

African American household viewership was up 4%, as 11.2 million viewers (48% female) within black households tuned in to watch.

Nielsen also found that higher-income households were more likely to tune in to Super Bowl XLIV.  A whopping 74% of $500K+ homes tuned in to the game, compared to 45% of all households. And with each step down the income ladder, viewership declined, with households that bring in $10K or less averaging a 30.5% household rating.

The Super Bowl continues to skew to male viewers, with men representing almost 55% of viewers. Nevertheless, an estimated 48.5 million females watched the game, up 4.3 million from last year’s contest. Over the last five years, the total number of femaleswatching the game has climbed 17%. Meanwhile,  an estimated 58 million men watched the Super Bowl, up 3.5 million year-over-year.

A look at age/gender demographics showed that viewers of both genders exhibited a similar viewing arc: generally, the older the viewer, the more likely they tuned into the game.

And one final note that might interest pet owners (and pet product advertisers!): viewers who own a dog or cat had 18% higher Super Bowl ratings than those with no dog or cat.

Repucom, which incorporates Nielsen’s television audience ratings data with their measurement of in-game sports sponsorship, analyzed all in-program brand exposure across all content during the Super Bowl broadcast. Excluding standard television commercials, the analysis tracked all television graphic and venue brand exposure for all four quarters of the game, the Hyundai Kickoff Show, the entire halftime segment, and the Intel Super Bowl Today Post Game Show.