The Super Bowl is the most watched event in the United States (averaging 112.7MM viewers in the last four years) and one of the biggest days of the year for advertisers. Now, with mobile representing the largest share of search volume across devices, Avocados from Mexico (AFM) took a mobile first approach in designing their Super Bowl hub landing page, with an aim to increase mobile visits for all new Super Bowl LI content. In addition, AFM looked to generate more buzz around their “Secret Society” content by hosting a sweepstakes on Twitter that featured up to $10,000 in prizes. With so much competition during the Super Bowl, the agency knew how important it would be for new AFM Super Bowl LI content to be easy to find and accessible in search results, especially during micro-moments consumers experience before, during and after the commercial airs.

To capitalize on the large Super Bowl TV audience and drive site visits, AFM needed coverage for any Super Bowl LI “commercial” and “sweepstakes” terms that consumers may be searching. Additionally, it was important for them to be the main resource for “avocado” or “guacamole” themed dishes featured at a Super Bowl party. With this in mind, the agency built campaigns that would follow consumers during their Super Bowl party preparations.

One month prior to Super Bowl LI, the agency built and launched campaigns focused on AFM “Super Bowl sweepstakes” terms, general Super Bowl “sweepstakes” and “contest” terms to spread awareness about the contest, and leveraged creative including “Secret Society” messaging in the weeks leading up to and after the commercial aired. The sweepstakes campaigns also featured Site links highlighting ‘Avocado’ based recipes themed around the upcoming big game to ensure AFM was top of mind among users looking for recipes as they planned their Super Bowl parties.

In the second phase of our Paid Search strategy, the agency launched general Super Bowl campaigns one week prior to the big game, making a push to capitalize on the increased buzz as the game approached. These campaigns leveraged “super bowl commercial”, “recipe” and high volume “avocado” and “guacamole” themed keywords paired with football-themed messaging to get consumers excited about AFM and Super Bowl LI. In addition, the agency utilized mobile bid optimizations across all campaigns in the Super Bowl initiative to drive more mobile visits with the site.

As a result of this campaign strategy, Merkle’s Digital Bowl Report had AFM’s Paid Search strategy tied for first amongst all digital advertisers. The report referenced the agency’s use of “usable content” within their Sitelinks that provided different recipes and ideas for Super Bowl get-togethers that could be used before and after the game. The report also highlighted the mobile interface used by AFM to attract mobile engagement, which our Paid Search campaigns promoted in force. In terms of metrics, year over year the campaigns saw significant improvement with 3x more clicks to site with only a 107% increase in investment, a 37% decrease in CPCs for general Super Bowl campaigns, a 249% increase in mobile device visits with a 10% lower CPC, and 12.5K visits to the Sweepstakes page, making up 15% of overall traffic.