• by Gavin O'Malley , Staff Writer @mp_gavin, February 8, 2017

The Atlanta Falcons weren’t alone in defeat on Sunday. Hashtags had a bad Super Bowl showing, too.

Indeed, just 30% of TV ads that ran during the big game featured hashtags -- down significantly from 45%, last year.

That’s according to a report prepared by Marketing Land, which notes that hashtags in Super Bowl ads peaked (at 57%) back in 2014.

URLs, meanwhile, appear to be on the rise -- up to 39%, during this year’s Super Bowl, from a low of 35%, last year.

This year, hashtags that did make the cut included Skittles’ #TasteTheRainbow, T-Mobile’s #TheSafeWordisUnlimited, and #AvoSecrets from Avocados From Mexico.

Once the sole domain of Twitter, hashtags have become a standard search and categorization tool across the Web. That shift was accelerated in 2015 when Facebook began incorporating hashtags in its service.

Does this new data suggest that hashtags are fading in popularity among marketers?

Any such conclusion would be premature, but -- anecdotally speaking -- we have heard from younger users that the hashtag isn’t nearly as cool as it was once.