Adriana Lima starred in a television spot for Teleflora.

Advertisers turned to the fashion industry — and a very specific part of it — to grab viewers’ attention during last night’s Super Bowl. The face of Victoria’s Secret, Givenchy, and numerous other labels both high and low, model Adriana Lima also seemed to be the star of yesterday’s commercial breaks.

The model, however, wasn’t employed to stump for fashion brands.  Instead, Lima was tapped by Teleflora and, more unexpectedly, Kia.  The automaker, interestingly enough, didn’t bring on Lima merely by following a rote model-bikini-car commercial formula.  Instead, the supermodel was specifically hired owing to her social media graph — when choosing stars for their ad, Kia looked to their likes and followers on Facebook and Twitter.  With 1.2 million Facebook fans, Lima made the cut.

While it’s notable that one supermodel was singled out for multiple Super Bowl ads, how she was chosen might be a harbinger of new hiring practices.  Will we soon see more models picked for jobs based on their social media graphs?  If so, building an online brand might become just as important for individual members of the fashion industry as it already is for retailers, labels, and fashion houses.