XLIX One Of Least Cluttered Recent Super Bowls, Fewer Hashtags Too

by Joe Mandese , February 2, 2015

Total non-programming time, including brand advertising, and NFL and network promotions, was down nearly a minute from last year, and more than three minutes from the recent high in 2013, but more of it was accounted for by longer-form commercials.

Of the 39 minutes and 45 seconds of brand advertising time, 38% was comprised of 60-second spots, the second-highest total of longer-form units in Super Bowl history, according to data released this morning by Kantar Media. The 21 :60s aired this year was one less than last year’s 22 60-second units.

“The surfeit of longer announcements meant that many commercial pods contained just two units from paying sponsors, which potentially gave each ad more visibility to the audience,” Kantar noted in its analysis.

Another factor that may have contributed to lower clutter and higher engagement for this year’s Super Bowl is that a much lower percentage of ads contained Twitter hashtags than in recent years.

2 comments about "XLIX One Of Least Cluttered Recent Super Bowls, Fewer Hashtags Too".

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Jon Swallen from Kantar Media, February 3, 2015 at 9:06 a.m.
That's a poorly written headline. Substitute the word "most" for "least" and it becomes accurate. As the Kantar Media analysis states, this SB ranks #3 all-time in terms of total amount of ad time.
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Joe Mandese from MediaPost Inc., February 3, 2015 at 9:25 a.m.

Sorry Jon. You're right, the headline does not accurately reflect the story about Kantar's findings. The story notes that it was one of the least cluttered recent Super Bowls. We've changed the headline to reflect that. We found it newsworthy that your analysis found that not just the total amount of non-programming time was down, but that a greater share of longer-form (:60s+) units meant there were fewer overall commercial messages, to be a more significant trend than the historical context of overall non-programming and commercial time. Plus fewer hashtags in spots was interesting too.