X debuts real-time Super Bowl ad conversation tracking
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For the first time, X tracked conversation about this year's Super Bowl ads in real time as it seeks to re-cement itself as the dominant digital town square.
Why it matters: X's advertising business took a hit following Elon Musk's takeover, and this is a buzzy way for the platform to appeal to advertisers by showing that it still generates conversation.
What they're saying: "The Super Bowl is the biggest moment on X every year. Conversation spikes, brand engagement on the platform spikes and we want to take an ownership position on that," Monique Pintarelli, X's head of global advertising, told Axios.
How it works: X's AI-powered tracking platform, BrandRanx, monitored brand sentiment and buzz from Jan. 25 — the NFL Conference Championships — through Sunday night's Super Bowl and analyzed millions of posts, replies and reposts.
- The result is a dynamic, real-time ranking of the most talked about, most positive, most reposted and most disruptive — online ads only — brands.
- Of note, X executives said their teams used additional scanning and monitoring to ensure bot-driven activity did not influence the rankings.
Zoom in: According to the rankings, Apple Music is the brand that saw the most conversation on X throughout the tracking period due to Bad Bunny's halftime performance, followed by Pokémon and Dunkin'.
- Budweiser, Pokémon and Apple Music received the most positive engagement and sentiment around their ads, while State Farm and Google Gemini were among the brands with the most viral posts.
- While Kraft Mac & Cheese did not run a national TV spot, it ranked as the most disruptive by driving the highest percentage of brand conversation on X.
- Garage Beer, Jeep and Skittles also showed up as disrupters.
Zoom out: Several AI giants spent money on the big game with the hope of humanizing the technology, but only Google's Gemini ad landed on the BrandRanx rankings.
- Meta ran two spots highlighting the Meta glasses, while OpenAI ran an ad promoting its coding agent CodeX.
- Anthropic made waves ahead of the Super Bowl with a series of spots that positioned Claude as the anti-ad chatbot.
- And Microsoft used the moment to run an ongoing campaign to promote Copilot.
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