Despite being plagued by recent controversies and brand safety concerns, X (formerly Twitter) remains the king of second-screen viewing of this year's Super Bowl for consumers, agency executives say. .
The X won't be the centerpiece of this year's Super Bowl campaign, but no alternative has emerged to reign as the second screen. Instead, agency executives are encouraging clients to diversify their approach across multiple platforms to reach shoppers wherever they are online during the Big Game.
“This primary second screen remains in use simply because there is nothing comparable in terms of the scale of real-time conversation during live events, especially sports,” said co-founder and chief of ad agency WorkInProgress. Creative Officer Matt Talbot said. “But it is more difficult for brands to operate there because of the uncertainty and high risk.”
Historically, X has been the go-to social media platform for marketers to engage in real-time conversations and amplify their marketing messages during live events like the Super Bowl. Perhaps the most notable example of this was Oreo's “you can dunk in the dark” tweet after the lights went out during the Super Bowl game between the 49ers and the Ravens, circa 2013.
Since then, text-based social media platforms have had new leadership, new competition from the likes of Threads, and new questions around brand safety. Late last year, X opted out of an independent audit. This meant that marketers simply had to trust that X was brand safe if the platform believed so, even if the claims could not be independently verified.
Safety concerns have led many brands and advertisers to flee co-ops for both media spending and organic presence, he said. A new digital town square has yet to emerge, but while many have tried (see here why marketers weren't sold on an alternative to X), at least for the Super Bowl X will remain intact. left behind.
“Sports, especially the NFL, is one of the few industries where X has really been able to defend against places like Threads and Instagram and even TikTok,” said Liz Cole, chief social officer at VML advertising agency. It feels like it is,” he said. “It really feels like the soccer conversation is alive there.”
It's unclear exactly what connects football fans to the platform, but marketing experts speculate that “users may fall into the demo using their second screen for Super Bowl-related activities.” ing. [don’t] “We care a lot about what's going on at Company X,” said Mika Friedman, vice president of growth at marketing agency Ruckus.
Last year, Company X, which was competing for advertising dollars, offered marketers $250,000 in free advertising space in hopes of inspiring them. That doesn't seem to be the case this year, as all six agencies Digiday spoke to for this article said they hadn't heard from X about promotional pricing ahead of this year's big game. According to the Wall Street Journal, X began promoting its Super Bowl advertising deal in early February of last year.
TikTok offered similar incentives last year, establishing itself as a potential second-screen competitor. However, given that short-form video platforms require more effort in terms of content creation, there is a greater distance between ideation and submission, and the point of maintaining a real-time conversation in the same way as X. So the brand is going to be behind the 8-ball. . It's unclear whether TikTok will offer the same incentives this year. In a request for details, the platform said it had spent a year rolling out incentives to advertisers, including some focused on big games.
“One of the reasons [X] Success in this field is a matter of effort or lack of effort, and it requires putting something out there and joining the conversation.'' Crispin Porter & Bogusky Agency Social・Sam Kendrick, Senior Director of Marketing said:
Instead, TikTok will help brands prepare teaser content ahead of the Super Bowl, leverage paid media to expand their reach, publish in real-time during the game, activate boots, and more this year. It could be part of a multi-layered approach to the big game. said Chris Shoemake, vice president of communications strategy and media for Cactus Agency, a ground partner for discoverability.
Agency executives say X's direct competitor, Threads, could position itself as a second screen if it releases a chronological feed and improves its hashtag functionality to attract more users. (Click here for a timeline of Threads' growth.)
“Zack certainly wants Threads to replace Twitter as a 'real-time town square' to drum up Super Bowl excitement, but to me the platform still feels like a shopping mall versus a town square. “It feels like a lot of brands are competing for attention and not having a 'peer-to-peer conversation,'” Shoemake said in an email.
But agency executives say they're not telling clients to put all their eggs in the X basket for this year's Super Bowl. Instead, marketers and brands should consider diversifying where they activate, making X part of their overall strategy rather than the main course. As more social media companies move into the stratosphere, agency executives are anticipating distributed second screens rather than a single second screen.
This plays into the idea of the current fragmentation of society, with advertisers investing in multiple platforms, from X and Instagram to TikTok and Threads, to meet audiences wherever they are. ing.
“It’s about posting in a diverse mix of locations and having overall success, or whether you can capture the zeitgeist in one place,” Kendrick says.
But executives say X will continue to reign supreme on second screens, at least for this year's Super Bowl.
“That said, sports, and the Super Bowl in particular, are at the final hurdle in the cultural water cooler with enough active viewers to make the second-screen experience worthwhile for viewers.” One,” says partner Alex Sobchak. said the chief strategy officer of nmbl agency in an email.
