Kristen O'Hara, VP, US Agency & Brand Solutions at Google

Google's Vice President of Agency and Brand Solutions, Kristen O'Hara, joins a radio program to discuss search trends during Super Bowl 57. The most searched question during the game was whether Rihanna was pregnant, and it was confirmed by her press team. Bradley Cooper's T-Mobile ad sparked a question about whether he is an Eagles fan. Travis Kelsey received more attention than his brother, Jason, during the game. The longest punt return in Super Bowl history was a popular search query. The color of the Gatorade dumped on the winning coach was purple. Star-studded ads, such as Melissa McCarthy's Booking.com ad and John Travolta's T-Mobile ad, were among the most watched. Google also had an ad featuring Amy Schumer and Doja Cat. The most searched players during the game were Patrick Mahomes, Travis Kelsey, Jalen Hurts, and Jason Kelsey. The term "octopus" was trending, referring to a player scoring a touchdown and a two-point working hard overnight and crunching all the numbers from the Super Bowl, whether it was the reaction to the commercials during the game, or some of the moments in during the game, or what was going on in social media. I got some special guests joining me this morning just to give a recap from the Google perspective about Super Bowl 57. And my guest who's joining me this morning just to talk a little bit about some of the search trends and things that were happening is Google's Vice President of Agency and Brand Solutions, Kristen O'Hara, who's with me here at the RNJ Morning Program. Kristen, good morning. It's Burt Barron, WRNJ Radio in New Jersey. How are you? Great to have you here. I'm getting vice presidents now to do segments with me. Wow, we're going places with this. I like this. Thank you so much for making yourself available this morning. But, you know, looking at some of the trends, let's start with some of the things that were happening on social media. And I think what was going on big time, as I'm sure you were witnessing well as well, during the halftime performance by Rihanna, which I thought was really excellent, the speculation was rampant about, is she with child? Is she expecting? What's going on there? That had to be one of the most searched things while the game was actually taking place last night. And Burt, you are right. The number one most searched question of Super Bowl 57 was, is Rihanna pregnant? I was watching, it was coming up from everywhere. Yeah. Yeah, I thought the performance was excellent, by the way. But every time I would like glance down at my phone, all of a sudden it would be all these questions on social media asking about her. I'm like, maybe we'll find out after she's done here. I'm not really sure. But interesting that that was so popular. And as we know, it did get confirmed, right? That's right. By her press folks during the game. So, I have to say, Rihanna was a breakout search star last night. And a lot of the search about Rihanna was about her personally. You know, how old is her son that she had last year? How old is she? Is she pregnant? As much as it was about her amazing concert that she put on. Maybe the world's biggest reveal party we were invited to last night without even knowing it, exactly. Another big question, another, yeah, another question that came up surrounding Bradley Cooper. And I thought that his T-Mobile ad with his mom was really good. Question, is Bradley Cooper an Eagles fan? I thought because of that movie, he was an Eagles fan. I know he lives in New York City. I guess he's an Eagles fan. I'm not really sure. And again, Bert, you would be right. I mean, we could put you right with us here at Google. The second most asked question was, you know, is Bradley Cooper an Eagles fan? Actually, the third most asked question. He did pop a lot last night in the searches because, you know, he had the T-Mobile ad as well. He's a huge Eagles fan. And even the week leading up to the game, you know, we had a lot of silver lining playbook questions about the Eagles from that movie that Bradley Cooper starred in. Excellent. And the world just heard, I just got a job offer from Google. I don't know if you guys just caught that there, but very good. The Kelsey brothers, that's another really interesting wrinkle to the game last night. Travis Kelsey versus Jason Kelsey. And more people were searching Travis, which makes a lot of sense, Kristen, because Travis is, he's a skill player, not to knock the other guy. Travis catches the ball. He runs with the ball. He scores. The other guy's job is to push people around for three hours. So it makes sense that Travis was getting more social media attention last night. Yeah, Travis absolutely did. I mean, both Kelsey brothers and the whole Kelsey storyline was a breakout. You know, Donna super bombed Kelsey with her sewn together jacket with both teams and her jerseys. But yeah, I think Travis dealt the double whammy to his brother, not only winning the game, but was searched four times as much as his brother during the game. That's very true. You can really rub it in this morning now, that's for sure. Exactly. Very good. Some of the other things, if you want to just comment on that, I think we also had, we've never had a punt run back for a touchdown, I don't think, in the history of the Super Bowl. But did we see the longest one ever last night? We did see, and again, popping at the top of the list of questions asked of Google last night, the longest punt return in Super Bowl history. And it really was an incredible punt return by, you know, Tony last night. And, you know, 65 yard touchdown was absolutely incredible. And I think America was trying to make sure they weren't seeing things because it was so long. Yeah, it was really exciting. And even things like what people pay attention to, even just the minutiae, if you will, of the color Gatorade that is dumped on the winning coach or that the people are drinking, people actually converse about that, don't they? They 100% do. And the color was purple last night, which is fun. Well done by Gatorade. Very interesting. I'm old enough that Gatorade was just one color when I was growing up. It was this lemonade type color when I was a little kid there. My guest this morning at the RNJ Morning Program is Kristen O'Hara. She's Google's Vice President of Agency and Brand Solutions. And we're doing a little bit of a recap of the things from the viewers' perspective of the Super Bowl last night, whether it was things on the field, and we'll talk about some of the top ads. We'll check those out next. Overall, did you have an overall opinion, Kristen, of the quality of the ads in the game last night? Listen, I mean, I think the ads always show up big the night of the Super Bowl and the week leading up. I think last night what America told us is that they love their celebrities because eight out of the top ten most watched ads on YouTube during game day were the star-studded ads. At the top of the list was Melissa McCarthy's Booking.com, Somewhere Anywhere, with her fun little musical song. We saw John Travolta pop in his T-Mobile throwback to Greece with Zach Braff and Donald Faison, also a huge crowd pleaser. Snoop in Skechers also broke out last night with a surprise combo of Martha Stewart, Tony Romo, and Snoop Dogg in that Skechers commercial. So a lot of fun ones for sure, but definitely a lot of star-studded ads that were really popular last night. Yeah, really clever. I think there was another one too there. I don't know if it was for an HR company or something, but it was people like Paul Stanley from Kiss and Ozzy Osbourne. They were mad that people around an office environment will refer to each other as rock stars, and they're like, you're not rock stars. You haven't done anything that we've done for all these years. That was kind of an interesting one as well. Oh, yeah. That was so much fun. Exactly. That was for work day. Exactly. Upset with everyone calling themselves rock stars when they aren't. You're absolutely right. They're seeing Ozzy Osbourne in a shirt and tie and answering a telephone. Our Google Pixel ad. Oops, sorry. No, no trouble. Talk about Google. You guys were in the game last night too. Yeah. I mean, as much as we're watching the trends, we're actually advertising just like other big brands, and our Pixel ad last night was the fifth most watched ad in a game day, which also featured Amy Schumer, Doja Cat, and a couple other celebrities as well. Good for you. This Google thing is going to be around a while. You guys are a company that's not going anywhere, I think. I think this Google thing is going to catch on. For our last segment, if we could, who were some of the top players? I mean, McMahomes had to be there, and I think the quarterback for the Eagles had to be there too. Who were some of the most searched players during the game last night? Do you have that data available? We sure do. You know, no surprise, our MVP, Patrick McMahomes, was at the top of the list of the most searched players, followed by his teammate, Travis Kelsey. And then the Eagles duo, Jason Hurst and – sorry, Jalen Hurst and Jason Kelsey came in as the third and fourth most searched players. But there were also trending players at different points in the game. You know, Nick Fulton was trending there when he tagged the game with that fumble recovery for a touchdown, which was pretty amazing. Yeah. So we did see a lot of changes as the game went on, because it was an action-packed game for sure. It really was. Always exciting when the defense scores points too. I always like to see that. I know. And Bert, tell me, did you know what an octopus was? I did not. That play in the game. That was another shocker, right? It was. Like, people were asking, you know, what is an octopus in football? It was a top trend last night. And that was when, you know, a player scores the touchdown, and the same player scores that two-point conversion, which also happened last night, which was pretty incredible. Hence the eight points, I guess, that are scored by one person. They call that the octopus. Very good. That's very clever. Exactly. Now I've got to start Googling, will the Jets ever win the Super Bowl in Bert's lifetime? Maybe we should look that one up next. I don't know. I don't know about that one. You're talking to a Giants fan, Bert, so I'm not going to comment. My chances just got a lot worse then, I think, when you ask a Giants fan, that's for sure. Kristen O'Hara, Google's Vice President of Agency and Brand Solutions, thank you so much for the time this morning. I really appreciate the quick turnaround. I mean, the game was late last night, and you're right back with me here this morning with a recap of everything that was happening. So thanks again so much for the time, and great to speak with you today. Thanks so much, Bert.