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Research: Superbowl Advertisers struggled with very high mobile load times

According to Keynote, last Super Bowl wasn’t that exciting making advertisers take part as the main attraction for which they had to make their brand and ads worth the price. They tried to make a difference among consumers with connected devices in their laps and pockets.

Content

What:  Research company keynote monitored the advertiser sites across all 3-screens, and came to the conclusion that advertisers continue to struggle with connecting to consumers beyond the television screen, especially on mobile devices.
Why it matters: According to Keynote , advertisers often delivered sites that are not optimized for viewing on smartphones and with a large amount of data especially from sites using Responsive Web Design (RWD) techniques.

superbowlAccording to Keynote, last Sunday’s Super Bowl game wasn’t that exciting due to the clear lead of the Seattle Seahwaks over the Denver Broncos throughout the match. This put even more attention on the ads that were broadcast. Advertisers tried to make a difference, particularly to consumers with connected devices in their laps and pockets.

Keynote remarks that advertisers continue to struggle with connecting to consumers beyond the television screen, especially on the mobile devices most consumers have at hand. The average load time for advertiser sites on smart phone was nearly 20 seconds with only 6 sites coming in at less than 10 seconds.

Keynote monitored the advertiser sites across all 3-screens, and came to the conclusion that desktop and tablet sites performed much better than mobile.

keynote

Responsive Web Design vs Performance

According to Keynote, Advertisers often delivered sites that are not optimized for viewing on smartphones. The reason for this was that the amount of data delivered was very large, especially from sites using Responsive Web Design (RWD) techniques. 50% of the sites Keynote monitored used the RWD approach.

Site type

Bytes(avg)

Sites

Mobile

882,369

12

None

1,681,507

2

RWD

3,288,855

14

Keynote states that RWD is a great technique when used properly. Keynote executive  Aaron Rudger, highlighted the benefits of using RWD with a performance-oriented mindset.

Twitter

twitterKeynote suggests that a 58% of the brands took to social platforms like Twitter and YouTube for cross-screen engagement. By using hashtags, advertisers chose to interact through Twitter as opposed to doing it from their websites. Still, viewers turned to mobile sites for more information about the companies in ads.

Of all the sites Keynote monitored:

  • Kia’s had the lowest availability at just 91%, with server errors from 5:55pm PT until 6:30 pm PT.
  • Pepsi’s site on the smart phone was close to 90% success rate. Pepsi downloaded a 19 MB of data while viewing its page, more than many desktop sites. Pepsi put content not immediately visible. IN this way, delays didn’t impact the core page (which takes only 6 to 8 seconds to load the visible part of the site).Still, according to Keynote downloading over 150 unoptimized images uses up more bandwidth than some entire mobile sites do and consumes a lot of users’ data.In this sense, Pepsi violates practices such as compressing images, for smart phone performance.
  • SodaStream, came in at a lean 216KB, with a solid performance until after the game started. After its ad ran, the site “hung up” for 5 to 10 minutes at around 6:36pm PT. Although performing well across desktop, smart phone and tablet, SodaStream had some timeout errors for a brief period, enough for some consumers to notice.

According to an analysis made by Brandwatch, sharing of social media content on mobile devices was up 67% compared to the 2013 Super Bowl, and brands only accounted for 1% of the event conversation on social media:

  • Facebook’s activity grew by 42.9% and Pinterest added on 7% versus the last Super Bowl.
  • Budweiser was the most popular with a 65% share of voice and generated the best results on Facebook .
  • Pepsi beat its rival, Coca-Cola, with a 13% share of voice compared to 4% for Coca-Cola.
  • SodaStream did not fall far behind with 3%.
  • Doritos, Cheerios and Beats Music managed 4% share with fashion brand H&M achieving 3%.
  • Bruno Mars was became the most mentioned celebrity and the Broncos’ Peyton Manning was the most mentioned player.

What Keynote’s advises

mobilesBetter testing ahead of time, and when optimizing for mobile not trying to squeeze desktop content onto a phone. Content needs to be adapted for the size of the device both in terms of network latency and the size of screen. Underestimating the value of preparing a site for high traffic surges, won’t produce a successful outcome. Users want to connect with brands on their terms and for doing so they need responsive mobile Web experience.

 

Sources: Keynote & mandmglobal

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