Super Bowl ads Hashtags slip to 30%

Hashtag Marketing Use in Decline

From a high of 57% three years ago, hashtags were only in about one-third of marketing ads.

Hashtags were in 30 percent of Super Bowl 51 ads, down significantly from 45 percent last year. More ads used URLs than hashtags for the first time since Marketing Land has measured them, 39 percent in all. Twitter barely beat Facebook and Instagram as the most-mentioned social network, though neither was explicitly mentioned often.

The statistics are from our sixth annual Hashtag Bowl count of hashtags, social media mentions and URLs in ads shown during Super Bowl LI.We tabulated only nationally shown ads and only those shown between kickoff and the end of the game. See  below for our full rundown and further notes on this.

The Hashtag Marketing Count

The scoreboard at the top of this article has our final count, but here’s the summary with percentages, based on a total of 66 ads reviewed.

• Total national ads (kickoff to end-of-game): 66
• Hashtags in ads: 20 total, in 30 percent of ads overall
• URLs in ads: 26 total, in 39 percent of ads overall
• Twitter in ads: 5 total, 8 percent of ads overall
• Facebook: 4 total, 6 percent of ads overall
• Instagram: 4 total, 6 percent of ads overall

Hashtag Use In Marketing

Below, the frequency of both hashtag and URL use as Marketing Land has tracked over recent years:

• Hashtag usage in Super Bowl ads hit a peak of 57 percent in 2014. It was 50 percent for 2013 and 2015. The lowest usage was 12 percent in 2012, when Marketing Land first began tracking.
• The real surprise this year was URL use overtaking hashtags. Marketing Land first began measuring URLs in 2014. They consistently stayed below hashtag usage until overtaking it this year.

Original article by Danny Sullivan on February 5, 2017 at 10:34 pm - read full marketing advertising article  

Conclusion For Direct Mail Marketing

Hashtag Trend Impact For Direct Mail Postcard and Letter Marketing?

Should you use a hastag in your direct mail campaign? Maybe. If it is an intergral part of your mixed online and offline campaign then yes. However, it may be better to stick with something more timeless like your website URL, or a QR code that connects people directly to your site or a landing page where you can capture there information.