• by Larissa Faw , February 4, 2019

Pepsi's Super Bowl halftime show featuring Maroon 5 and SpongeBob attracted more social media buzz than the beverage brand's ad with rapper Cardi B, according to Talkwalker's analysis of all Super Bowl-related conversations on social networks, news websites, blogs and forums in 187 languages. 

While people were undeniably chatting, some of this halftime discussion was negative.

SpongeBob fans were upset that Maroon 5 didn't play "Sweet Victory," the "SpongeBob SquarePants" song, in memory of the animated show’s creator, who passed away in November.

Overall, Pepsi won the night in terms of social media attention with 71,800 mentions, reports Talkwalker, peaking during the halftime show. Doritos came in second with 29,700 mentions, including 57,300 shares of the brand's commercial introducing the collaboration between Chance the Rapper and the Backstreet Boys. 

Bud Light, with its "Game of Thrones" ad in partnership with HBO, ranked third with 13,400 mentions.

The Avenger’s tweet about the new Marvel movie release "The Avengers Endgame," rated as the top non-sports-related hashtag with 173,400 mentions for #AvengersEndgame. The message also garnered 71,767 retweets and 145,957 likes. 

Avocados notably surpassed Pepsi in the battle for brand-affiliated hashtags by receiving 96,000 mentions of #AvocadosFromMexico hashtag with a 62.8% positive sentiment, compared to 48,000 mentions for #PepsiMoreThanOK.

According to Talkwalker, the primary chat drivers this year were: just to have fun, TV/movies, celebrity endorsement and environmental causes.

Separately, Pepsi received the most attention on Twitter, followed by Devour Foods, Microsoft, Amazon Prime Video and Stella Artois, according to AI-directed social media marketing platform Socialbakers. Its research focused specially on Facebook, YouTube and Twitter.

Facebook's top five were Budweiser, Stella Artois with an ad featuring Sarah Jessica Parker, Bumble whose spot starred Serena Williams, Michelob Ultra with a Zoe Kravitz-centric commercial, and Hyundai.

Similarly, YouTube's most viewed were Budweiser, Michelob Ultra, Stella Artois, Doritos and Microsoft.