Brands in the Super Bowl spent as much as $7 million per 30-second spot this year, but a lot of the packaged-goods brands in the game saw their messages get intercepted in the end zone of e-commerce.

Analytics firm Profitero found more than 6,000 instances of brands attempting to intercept competitor brands on Amazon, Instacart and Walmart.com during the course of the game, with particularly high activity among beer and snack marketers.

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In particular, there were more than 300 instances where Constellation Brands-owned beer brands Modelo and Corona “intercepted” Anheuser-Busch InBev brands in the game by placing an ad on a key search term or product page – including Budweiser, Bud Light Next, Michelob Ultra and its Ultra Organic Seltzer, Bud Light Hard Seltzer Soda and Cutwater Spirits.

“One of the smart steals of the game was by Coors, who intercepted Michelob’s organic beer ad on Instacart, creating awareness for its own organic offering without the $7 million spent on TV advertising,” said Sarah Hofstetter, president of Profitero.

Most AB InBev beer brands in the game fared poorly at preventing rivals from intercepting their e-commerce visibility, although its canned cocktail brand Cutwater Spirits was among the best at playing defense. AB InBev controls exclusive alcohol ad rights to the game, so its brewer rivals are well-practiced at trying to crash its Super Bowl party. Molson Coors took its Big Game counter-programming tactics to new levels this year, apparently seizing on the unclaimed web domain BudLightNext.com and filling it with nonsense, as Ad Age reported last week. Representatives from Molson Coors have not commented on the incident.

'Conquesting'

Search counter-advertising against competitive ads, also known as “conquesting,” is common, but it gets more attention given the high stakes of the Super Bowl, when e-commerce sales often spike during a game that reaches a huge audience. Conquesting can mean advertisers end up paying a whole lot of money on TV in part to drive people to their competitors' e-commerce ads and listings, and then drive sales for them. Since most Super Bowl ads are announced well before the game, it’s also relatively easy for competitors to plan such strategies.

But conquesting isn’t easy to do everywhere. While Amazon and Instacart allow brands to buy rivals’ brand names, Walmart.com doesn’t, Hofstetter said.

Online search spawned by the Super Bowl can be considerable. Analytics firm EDO has found viewers this year were more than three times as likely to search for brands in Super Bowl ads as viewers of typical primetime TV ads.

CPG brands lagged others in search

The packaged-goods brands getting intercepted in e-commerce during the game generally weren’t inspiring as much search as non-CPG brands. EDO's Search Engagement Index for seven of the 11 CPG  brands it monitored fell below the average for Super Bowl spots.

EDO measures search activity using publicly available application programming interfaces such as Google Trends, not e-commerce search directly. But general search activity correlates with e-commerce search, since it often leads to retail sites.

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Super Bowl brands generating the most search activity this year, per EDO, were all non-CPG—Polestar, Cue Health, Amazon Prime Video and Kia. Their ads induced between 10 and 23 times as many searches as the average Super Bowl ad.

Procter & Gamble Co.’s Gillette did the best job of any Super Bowl CPG brand defending itself against rivals in e-commerce search, according to Profitero. But EDO found it generated only 13% of the search activity of the average Super Bowl ad. Gillette spokespeople didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Most-searched ads were most intercepted

The best-performing Super Bowl CPG brands in search activity, according to EDO, were Michelob Ultra, Bud Light Next, Budweiser and Doritos, with SEI scores of 116 to 271. They were also among brands getting the most counter-advertising from rivals, or in some cases friendly fire from siblings, according to Profitero.

PepsiCo’s Frito-Lay made some interesting plays, heavily intercepting e-commerce visibility from rival Kellogg Co.’s Pringles during the game, while its own snack brands also bid against one another heavily. For example, Lay’s outbid Kellogg Co.’s Pringles 142 times during the game, in Profitero’s research, but also outbid corporate sibling Cheetos 102 times. It may look like pointless piling on, but Frito-Lay brands bidding against each other actually helped block out competition, Hofstetter said.

Frito-Lay declined to comment, while a spokesperson for Kellogg Co. couldn't reach executives there for immediate comment.

Similarly, Colgate-Palmolive Co.’s Softsoap, which was not in the game, got in front of searches for sibling and Super Bowl advertiser Irish Spring twice as often as Procter & Gamble Co. rival Old Spice did. With some help from its bigger sibling, Irish Spring was among the best at defending against rivals intercepting its e-commerce search, according to Profitero.

It’s worth noting that intercepting in the end zone, while possibly demoralizing for the opponent, doesn’t necessarily win games in marketing or football. The Cincinnati Bengals intercepted a pass from the Los Angeles Rams in the end zone during the first half of the real game but still lost. Advertising too is often more of a long game.