• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, February 3, 2012

If the U.S. held an election asking residents to cast a vote for their favorite football team, the New York Giants would likely win. Clearspring ran sentiment analysis from its AddThis sharing platform showing the team that fans in each U.S. state favor, based on overall clicks, searches and shares. The New York Giants took more than 40 states; New England took the remainder. 

The data considers about 2 million events daily across 10 days, not including sentiment. "It's one thing if someone shares something about the Giants, but you need to consider whether the sentiment is positive or negative," said Greg Cypes, Clearspring director of product for AddThis. 

Clearspring tapped data related to search activity, social shares and clicks to analyze not only the favored football team of Super Bowl XLVI, but the favorite brands running ads during Sunday's game.

Pre-release of several ads from GoDaddy, Honda, Priceline and Volkswagen show interest by people sharing social content or searching for information from across the Web. When GoDaddy released its ad around Jan 18, for example, consumers actively shared it, but the public quickly tuned it out.

The content in the GoDaddy ad did not resonate with viewers, unlike the Honda Motor Co. ad that launched Jan. 26, with stars Matthew Broderick and Jerry Seinfeld to revive interest in its brands. The more than two-minute clip previewed a 60-second spot that will air during the Super Bowl. The CR-V crossover highlights Broderick behaving like his character in the 1986 film "Ferris Bueller's Day Off."

Cypes said the Honda ad made people think Ferris Bueller would come back for a sequel. The ad spiked more than 700%. "Honda released a teaser ad on Saturday that spiked, but the ad waned on Sunday, and then on Monday they released a longer version of the ad," he said.

The release of two clips a couple of days apart demonstrates how brands can keep the momentum of buzz and interest across the Web. Not all brands have similar strategies. Priceline's pre-Super Bowl ad didn't do as well, although people were intrigued with the death of the Negotiator, the character William Shatner played as the spokesperson for Priceline.

The pre-bowl ad, which spiked for about 1.5 days at 1300%, demonstrates that content matters -- but so does momentum because absence can hinder a brand's awareness campaign. And while Shatner's days as the bargain-hunting Negotiator may be done, he's set to go out with a bang in the Super Bowl spot.

Volkswagen also had little luck with its ad, releasing it a little too early, Cypes said. Coverage spiked this past Monday, but VW released its mid-month, peaking on Jan. 20 with a little more than 400%. "It comes down to timing," he said.

Cypes said even if a brand doesn't run an ad on broadcast TV, spending millions for a 30-second ad spot during the game and launching a campaign around the event can create buzz by mixing up the message and making it worth sharing.