It's not worth doing Marketing campaigns against Super Bowl competition for buyer attention, is it? HubSpot data suggests you might be wrong in that assumption

President Trump may have been pissed by Bad Bunny’s half-time show, but the US Super Bowl is one the remaining pieces of ‘event TV’ that audiences can be relied upon to tune into. This year’s official viewing figures saw 127.7 million people watch the game live across all platforms  - Bad Bunny bumped that up to 135.4 million for his spectacular performance - so it’s also inevitably one of the hottest, and most expensive, ad slots of the year - an average $8 million for a 30 second slot.

This year among the firms which splashed the cash were a host of AI and tech firms, including Google, Anthropic, OpenAI, and Salesforce. If you aren’t in the top one percent of companies that can afford a Super Bowl commercial, then you might think it’s best to slow things down and do less advertising during the time leading up to and after the event. Why? Because, runs the theory, people aren’t engaging during that time, even in a B2B context.

Guess what? They theory might be wrong - at least if new research from HubSpot is to be believed. This finds that there is a disconnect between what B2B marketers do during the Super Bowl period and buyers' actual attention.

So while B2B marketers tend to scale back in the time leading up to and after the big event, thinking their efforts will get lost in all the promotion around it, the HubSpot research suggests that, if anything, buyers are more engaged.

Drilling down

Hubspot’s conclusions are based on analysis of data pulled from the last three Super Bowls, says Sunil Desai, SVP of Marketing at the firm:

We looked at aggregate HubSpot platform data to understand how B2B engagement changes before, during, and after Super Bowl week. Rather than analyzing individual campaigns, we focused on broader patterns across email engagement and site traffic, comparing that period to surrounding weeks and typical seasonal baselines. The goal was to understand how marketer behavior and buyer engagement shift at a macro-level during this moment.

Here are a couple of data points the analysis surfaced:

• B2B email send volume drops 2.3% during Super Bowl week.
• Despite the lower send volume, open rates jump by 1.00 percentage point (pp), and click-through rates (CTR) rise by 0.56pp.
• Also, high engagement persists into the following week, with CTR remaining +0.45pp above average.

In addition, website traffic analysis showed page views increased by 7.5% during Super Bowl week. However, paid channels perform less well, suggesting that owned channels are more cost-effective during this period.

All that being so, what conclusion can Marketers draw from this in terms of engagement and traffic? Desai says:

While we can’t point to a single definitive cause, this pattern likely reflects the broader advertising environment around the Super Bowl. Consumers are inundated with paid messages that week, which can make additional ads easier to tune out. As a result, more intentional, owned channels—like email and direct website visits—may feel more relevant and draw higher engagement once some of that noise fades.

What heightened Super Bowl engagement actually means for B2B strategy

HubSpot’s data indicates an under-utilized opportunity for brand-building and demand generation, so the next question becomes how brands can capitalize on this increase in email engagement and website traffic next time around? Desai suggests:

For brands, the opportunity is to use this period of heightened attention to learn and improve, not just to capture a short-term spike. Our Loop Marketing playbook encourages teams to look closely at which campaigns and touchpoints drive the strongest engagement, then turn those insights into repeatable processes.

Practically, that means identifying what content, offers, or channels perform best during this window, reinforcing those experiences on high-traffic pages, and using the resulting engagement data to inform future campaigns.

Ensuring websites are optimized to capture and convert increased demand, especially in industries where this window aligns with seasonal momentum, can help turn a temporary spike in attention into extended engagement.

Opportunities

It’s not only HubSpot that thinks there is an opportunity here for B2B marketers. Sandra Fathi, founder of Affect, a public relations, marketing, and social media agency, said in a recent Marketing Profs article that B2B marketers can take advantage of the over 170 million Super Bowl watchers, but you have to do it the right way;

Notice that I said sports fans, not B2B audiences. At these key events, that’s who you need to engage, build trust with, and resonate with. Your targets are there to enjoy the game, not to be bombarded with work-related messaging when they’re off the clock.

And that is a very important thing for B2B marketers to keep in mind as they decide to build a campaign around a big consumer event. Sending traditional B2B marketing emails that try to sell something won’t work. Instead, the focus should be on brand awareness.

Fathi suggests tying marketing efforts to campaigns that increase awareness and message retention. Some of her suggestions included giveaways and well-designed contests, such as a care package to use on game day, or tickets to the game (for bigger budgets). She also punts tactics that are more budget-friendly, but can grab attention, including creating playbooks or blogs for customers and audiences that offer ideas for them to take advantage of the event.

It’s important to factor in that relevance and restraint matter more than clever Super Bowl tie-ins. Natalie Cunningham, SVP of Marketing at Data Axle, recently shared how B2B brands can create more personalized experiences by connecting their personal and professional lives. She explained that customers don’t separate the two, so why should marketers, saying:

More and more consumers, whether you're a business consumer or you’re a professional consumer, are asking for relevance. And they want you to know more about who they are as a person, in a data-compliant, non-creepy way. They want more relevance, and that can't just mean looking at their title and the company they work for.

If this is true, and B2B marketers can use personal information to improve B2B marketing, then it makes sense that they could also reach B2B customers through consumer events. What’s key is that the intent of those emails and other campaigns should be more about the customer as a consumer than as a buyer.

Channels

Back to HubSpot’s data and another conclusion must be that while email is a good way to reach customers during the Super Bowl window, the channel is often less important than the creative strategy. The strategy cannot be one that attempts to hijack the event; rather, it should work alongside it, using a more casual, fun, or entertaining tone. Also, the value exchange needs to be clear: aim for entertainment or sharing useful information.

Another key point a B2B marketer needs to consider is whether this is even the right thing for them to do. Marketing during the Super Bowl works better for companies with longer buying cycles or where brand familiarity matters, because it’s not about fast conversions; it’s about building brand awareness.

If you do decide to go this route, make sure you have some metrics in place to determine whether it’s working. If brand awareness is a key goal, then you need to measure brand search lift (by both traditional search and answer engines). You should also track website visits from your emails and email list growth. Finally, because the end goal is always a conversion, track downstream conversions that occur later.

My take

This past Super Bowl included more than a few B2B brands, so we know there is an opportunity to leverage this event, and other big events, and it doesn’t have to be an $8 million ad slot. It does have to be thoughtful and well planned, with clear metrics in place to determine what works and what doesn’t. You can apply the same thinking to other big sports events, like the NFL Stanley Cup, or the NBA Cup.

Could you apply this approach to smaller sporting events or other consumer events? I’d suggest the opportunity is even greater with smaller events because the audience is smaller and more targeted. At the same time, though, the messaging should be tighter and more relevant.

So, yes, the Super Bowl is over, and there’s plenty of time to plan for the next one. But in the meantime, look around for some other events you could run some tests against and start to hone your strategy.

**Editor’s note from overseas - Bad Bunny rocked!