Facebook is letting advertisers buy ads based around the Super Bowl audience, as the social network looks to emulate Twitter’s success in monetising real-time events.
The ads will target people based on what they are talking about in real time, with a video format that will play automatically on Facebook’s newsfeed, triggered by keywords that members mention in their posts.
The Super Bowl takes place on 1st February this year and typically attracts an audience of 100 million TV viewers.
Facebook will track the status updates and comments people post to the social network for keywords related to the Super Bowl.
People who post something Super Bowl-related will be added to an audience pool alongside the more than 50 million people who interacted with Super Bowl-related content on Facebook last year. The aggregated data will be anonymised to calm privacy fears.
Facebook offered something similar to advertisers around last year’s Super Bowl, as well as for the World Cup.
The company grouped together people who had interacted with football-related content, such as “liking” Peyton Manning’s or ESPN’s Facebook page, throughout the season leading up to last year’s Super Bowl.
Brands seeking an ‘Oreo moment’
The sporting event is becoming big business for brands. Rival Twitter is staffing war rooms of 13 advertisers for the Super Bowl, including PepsiCo and Anheuser Busch – triple the number of companies that worked directly with Twitter for last year’s big game.
Staffers at the 13 companies will monitor social networks during the game and pump out videos, tweets and graphical ads. Some companies will even have lawyers on hand to approve the spots.
All firms are looking to emulate the success of Oreo’s famous ‘You can still dunk in the dark’ tweet sent out during a power cut during the 2013 final.
Power out? No problem. pic.twitter.com/dnQ7pOgC
— Oreo Cookie (@Oreo) February 4, 2013
Viewers loved Oreo’s message, which was retweeted 10,000 times in one hour. The reaction left some wondering whether the quick tweet had an even greater payoff than Oreo’s actual Super Bowl ad, which cost millions more to create.
The tweeted graphic released during the blackout was “designed, captioned and approved within minutes,” thanks to members of 360i — the cookie company’s agency — gathered at a war room during the game.