Super Bowl Blackout Rockets Iron Man Sharing

After Beyonce’s electrifying half-time show turned out the lights for the first time, Super Bowl viewers experienced an unexpected game delay due to a partial stadium power outage.  When CBS cut to the first commercial during the blackout, fans saw the new Iron Man 3 Trailer.  Although thousands in New Orleans were left in the dark, this delay and the promise of an extended trailer on Facebook helped push Iron Man 3’s fanbase skyward far in excess of the Facebook activity experienced by any other Super Bowl advertiser!

Optimal tracked minute-by-minute changes in fan counts for a group of Super Bowl advertisers and other popular Facebook fan pages and the interactive results are available here (click to expand):

While the US Iron Man fanbase on Facebook skews towards younger comic-book and action movie fans (61% male, average age 24), over 57% of those who have shared the extended trailer on Facebook are women with an average age of 33, who are also 7x less likely to already be fans of the Iron Man franchise, showing how the trailer’s debut successfully broadened the appeal of the movie.  See Optimal’s Iron Man fan Audience Matrix profile report here.

The fortuitous blackout timing of the trailer airing meant many viewers, knowing they might have a few minutes before they could again watch the game, chose to visit the Iron Man 3 Facebook page after seeing the Super Bowl spot. Many liked the page and some, decided to share the trailer with friends.  Sharing content on Facebook is one of the strongest social signals there is, and one that most brands rightly aspire to. For the next forty minutes, Iron Man 3 fan growth spiked sharply and exceeded the next largest Super Bowl advertiser’s growth by a factor of 7 (as many as 2,000 new fans per minute).  Even after the blackout  ended, strong fan growth persisted. See the data here.

Although the blackout was accidental, the minute-by-minute social data shows the potential for interplay between television, online content and social sharing, and how advertisers need to think holistically about how channels work together to create incremental reach and interest in their products.  In IronMan 3’s case, the promise of exclusive online content, a ready social audience plus a bit of lucky timing became the fuel that rapidly propelled Tony Stark’s image to a new audience.

There are several other stories embedded (Audi?) in this uniquely powerful look at Facebook data from the analytics team at Optimal. See for yourself. We’re at your disposal to talk about the data, feel free to let us know if you have any questions!

About Optimal, Inc.

Optimal helps brands and advertisers manage social advertising campaigns in real-time with its media acquisition and optimization platform (Optim.al), and proprietary audience analytics suite (Audience Matrix and Keyword Expander). Optimal is a member of Facebook’s Preferred Marketing Developer (PMD) program and is based in San Francisco, with offices in Palo Alto, New York City, and Chicago.

For more information, please visit http://www.optimalsocial.com/