Those of us in the UK that stayed up to watch the Super Bowl last Sunday will have noticed that, for yet another year, we had to wait to see the commercials online until the next day. Before you say it we know that the game is on the BBC in the UK and so there will never be commercials but it got us thinking if about seeing if we could identify any data that may give some insight into the popularity of the Super Bowl and the ads that are associated in the international markets. To do this we began by looking at the volume of searches on “super bowl” in three international markets; Australia, Ireland and the United Kingdom over the past 30 days.
Surprisingly, given that the only NFL games played outside the North America, over the past year took place in London, the highest volume of searches on “super bowl” came in Ireland followed by Australia and then the United Kingdom. We then decided to see if there was an indication that the Super Bowl had increased in popularity over time by analysing the year on year growth of the term “super bowl” in each of the markets.
Australia
Ireland
United Kingdom
In each of the markets there has been substantial growth in searches for the term “super bowl” with the most relative growth coming in Ireland and the UK.
Although it is clear that there is an interest in each market and that interest in the Super Bowl is growing each year we also wanted to see if we could find any evidence of an international interest in the ads that are so famously associated with the Super Bowl. To do this we looked at the year on year growth of the searches for the term “super bowl ad”.
This graph above clearly shows that there has been a substantial growth in interest around Super Bowl ads since the 2009 Super Bowl with the highest volume, by far, coming in for the most recent game.
So what does all this mean? First, the data provides a good demonstration of rising demand but it is only a fraction of what could be collected and analysed. There are numerous other paid and non-paid online data sources that can be accessed in order to research the potential for new products or markets to expand into.
For the Super Bowl and the advertisers associated the data may offer an opportunity for business growth by reaching new audiences. The commercials currently produced for the Super Bowl are done so largely with a US audience in mind. However, given the right circumstances (eg the H&M commercial featuring David Beckham), a marketing team planning a Super Bowl advert could receive an added boost at very low additional cost by looking at an international markets strategy.
Blog post by Mike Jennings Director at Reform
Data Source: http://www.google.com/insights/search/
Tags: data analysis, International strategy, Multichannel strategy, search data, search volume, super bowl, superbowl