While the Chiefs emerged victorious and Rihanna lit up the stadium with an energetic performance and special announcement of her own, a slew of Hollywood stars appeared in ads thought up by clever marketers. 

Care to take a peek at the social media data around the event, from the top-mentioned ads to the celebrities driving the conversation?

We thought so. 

Grab another wing and whatever is left of that seven-layer dip, and let’s get to it. 

Note on methodology: All data was gathered from 6:30pm EST to 10:30pm EST, which is roughly the time frame of Super Bowl LVII. All the data comes from the public, Twitter brand mentions of each brand that aired an ad during the game.

Quick-fire stats on brands running ads at Super Bowl LVII

  • The brands that ran ads during Super Bowl LVII were collectively mentioned nearly 312,000 times during the game. That equates to 1,300 mentions of all the Super Bowl advertising brands per minute on Twitter during the game.
  • The brand that registered the most mentions on Twitter garnered more than 39,000 mentions for the entire time frame. 
  • Interestingly, that wasn’t the only winning brand on social media this year. The runner-up collected a neighboring 37,000 tweets during the game. 
  • This year’s Super Bowl saw something of a re-emergence of hashtags with roughly 40% of Super Bowl advertising brands bringing in an associated hashtag for their campaign.

Which brands “won” the Super Bowl?

While one brand often dominates the online conversation during the Super Bowl, this year was a little different. 

The one brand running an ad during the 2023 Super Bowl that was mentioned more than any other was the streaming service Tubi with more than 39,000 mentions overall. It turns out that making viewers think they’re sitting on the TV remote during the most important sports event of the year causes just enough panic to get people talking on social media. 

In the 15-second spot, it looked like announcers Kevin Burkhardt and Greg Olsen had returned from a commercial break until suddenly, the screen appeared to shift to someone scrolling through the Tubi TV app searching for something to watch. 

With their commercial – called Interface Interruption – Tubi started an avalanche of online conversation, which upon further examination appears to be a masterclass in the use of micro-influencers as the first few mentions came from less than a dozen highly engaged Twitter accounts. 

Of the whole conversation surrounding brands running ads during the game (312,000 posts in total), Tubi accounted for an impressive 13%. At its peak, Tubi rounded up 6,000 mentions in a single minute. 

But as noted above, Tubi wasn’t the only brand stealing the show during halftime. 

As a close runner-up in terms of mentions overall, we’ve got Bud Light with their ad “Hold” featuring Miles Teller and his wife, Keleigh Teller. 

In the ad, the couple (and their adorable French bulldog) turn their living room into a dance floor and start swaying to the dulcet tones of on-hold music while they wait on the phone for customer service. 

Overall, the commercial scored Bud Light over 37,000 mentions during the game, just shy of Tubi’s 39,000 mentions. However, by creating a highly relatable moment for the masses, Bud Light secured the most significant individual spike in online ad mentions by sparking over 1,200 mentions in a single minute.

Hats off to Tubi and Bud Light. Maybe you can both fit on top of the podium this year? 

We should also note top hashtags, since so many of the ads we saw this year encouraged people to share them. The three with the most mentions were: 

  1. #UltraClub - Michelob ULTRA with over 13,800 mentions
  2. #RealOrActing - Pepsi Zero Sugar with more than 6,500 mentions
  3. #MakeItBetter - Avocados from Mexico with nearly 6,000 mentions

The celebrities driving the conversation

This year’s Super Bowl ads featured over 50 celebrities which sparked more than 114,000 online mentions altogether.

One star rose above the rest.

Ben Affleck starred in the Dunkin’ Donuts ad as an employee serving customers at the drive-thru counter. At one point, Jennifer Lopez (Affleck’s wife) arrives to order, and the speedy comedic cameo earned her 4,700 online mentions of her own.

Rob Gronkowski’s FanDuel ad landed him the second-most discussed celebrity (though that didn’t necessarily translate into success for FanDuel, which came 13th in terms of advertisements with the most mentions).

A couple of other celebs were also able to make an impact in a shorter timeframe. While they weren’t in the top five most-mentioned celebrities overall, Jack Harlow and John Travolta were able to spark 870 and 720 mentions in a single minute, respectively. 

Thanks for reading our round-up of the numbers. If you have any questions about the data we’ve shared, you can email [email protected].