Which Super Bowl LI Commercials Were Social Hits?

Investors who were glued to their TV sets to watch Tom Brady's epic comeback in the 2017 Super Bowl are now shifting their attention and asking the more pertinent question: Which companies outperformed during commercial breaks?

The TD Ameritrade Ad Challenge used Social Sentiment data, a resource available to TD Ameritrade clients, to analyze social media sentiment and volume to determine which publicly traded companies are getting the most positive buzz about their ads.

Social Sentiment captures every social media mention. It's powered by LikeFolio, which aggregates conversations within a user's' social networks and tracks status updates. It also allows users to filter mentions related to any given division of the company.

"You see a lot of buzz after the Super Bowl where people are talking about the commercials in general, but there's never really that much [talk] about publicly traded companies that are advertising and how effective was their ad?" said Nicole Sherrod, TDA's managing director of trading.

Results Are In

Taking top ranks in the Ad Challenge is The Coca-Cola Co KO. The company received 8,356 positive tweets for its three commercials, which were titled "It's Beautiful," "Love Story" and "#WannaSprite."

"I think the story is that 'polarizing and political' won the night," LikeFolio's co-founder Andy Swan explained to Benzinga in an e-mail. "Coke's America the Beautiful ad was a rerun of an ad that got backlash three years ago, but it generated waves of positive tweets throughout the night."

Swan also pointed out that Coca-Cola beat out its rival PepsiCo, Inc. PEP, which was ranked eighth — even though it was a sponsor of the halftime show.

Swan also added that Volkswagen AG (ADR) VLKAY's Audi unit took the second spot for its commercial focused on the hotly debated topic of gender equality and fair pay.

"People just KEPT talking about it...which allowed it to get more mind share than the Buick ad that literally everyone liked," Swan added.

Full Rankings

The final rankings for the public companies in the 2017 TD Ameritrade Ad Challenge are as follows:

1. Coca-Cola: 8,356 positive tweets.
2. Volkswagen: 5,629 positive tweets.
3. Procter & Gamble Co PG: 5,568 positive tweets.
4. General Motors Company GM: 5,449 positive tweets.
5. Anheuser Busch Inbev NV (ADR) BUD: 4,938 positive tweets.
6. T-Mobile US Inc TMUS: 4,675 positive tweets.
7. Honda Motor Co Ltd (ADR) HMC: 3,824 positive tweets.
8. PepsiCo: 3,282 positive tweets.

Sherrod: 'Polarizing Can Win'

Speaking as a guest on Fox Business, Sherrod similarly highlighted Coca-Cola's three-year-old commercial and noted the political climate was much different at the time compared to today.

"Americans are liking it because it is embracing multiculturalism, it is about being inclusive so people really like it," she said. "As we talk a little bit more we will find that the ads that drilled into polarizing topics did pretty well and I think if you look what's going on in our country and what's happened over the course of the past six months — polarizing can win."

Sherrod also noted that advertisers are trying to target the millennial group by sharing core values of wanting to create a better world for the current and future generation.

Sherrod also commented on Procter & Gamble's commercial, noting that the advertising team at the company has done a great job as more people walking down the cleaning aisle in stores will now be thinking of the "Mr. Clean" character. In addition, the consumer goods staple is one of the most highly held stocks among TD Ameritrade's clients at around 1.5 billion shares.

Bottom line, Sherrod suggested that companies who won the commercial battles could see a boost to their stock on Monday but more important is to see if the millions of dollars spent on the commercials will generate a reasonable rate of return moving forward.