Wondering if a $2.4M Super Bowl ad is worth it? Check out GoDaddy's ride.

[miami_fan]

http://money.cnn.com/2005/02/08/tech...ex.htm?cnn=yes

NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - GoDaddy.com, the Super Bowl advertiser caught in a post-game ruckus of Janet Jackson-like proportions, saw traffic to its site surge during Sunday night's game and the controversy that followed the next day.

The number of visitors to GoDaddy.com, a privately-held reseller of Internet domain names, shot up nearly 400 percent after its first-quarter commercial aired, according to technology research firm comScore Networks. The company had 140,000 visitors Feb. 6, compared to a normal Sunday rate of about 30,000.

On Monday, amid news reports that Fox, the Super Bowl broadcaster, had yanked a second planned commercial after National Football League officials complained, traffic rose more than 250 percent above normal levels. GoDaddy.com typically gets 160,000 visitors on any given Monday. Yesterday it drew 590,000 visitors.

GoDaddy.com wasn't the only game advertiser to post an increase in traffic to it site Sunday. Indeed, the biggest increase -- 600 percent, to 43,000 visitors -- was registered by Budweiser.com. Anheuser-Busch ran 5 minutes worth of ads, including two that scored high in post-game viewer polls.

Official Internet sites for Olympus, Apple iTunes, Cadillac, and Ameriquest Mortgage -- also the half-time show sponsor -- also logged big, albeit smaller, increases in traffic after their commercials aired, according to comScore.

The implication from the data is that Super Bowl advertising increases product awareness. Whether that awareness lasts or translates into notably higher sales for this year's crop, who paid as much as $2.4 million per 30-second spot, remains to be seen.

Betting on a payoff
The Super Bowl and its ads are the most widely-watched television event of the year. But paying top dollar to hawk products during the game doesn't guarantee a sales boost. On the one hand, Apple Computer's infamous "1984" ad nearly two decades ago helped generate $4.5 million in sales within six hours of its broadcast, according to Bernice Kanner's "The Super Bowl of Advertising: How the Commercials Won the Game."

But the costly exposure didn't help many of the 17 Internet startups that dominated the 2000 game. Does anyone remember OurBeginning.com or OnMoney.com? Both sites vanished after the dot.com bubble burst a few months after the St. Louis Rams defeated the Tennessee Titans.

GoDaddy.com, while reminiscent of that spendthrift era, appears to be different. President Bob Parsons says the company has 650 employees and more than $100 million in sales in 2004.

GoDaddy.com's Super Bowl ad featured a buxom brunette who has a "wardrobe malfunction" while appearing before a television network censorship committee. The ad was intended to be a satire of last year's game, when Jackson exposed her breast while performing during half-time, and of how anxious networks executives are to placate federal regulators of decency standards.

The pressure to keep Super Bowl XXXIX clean contributed to the withdrawal of at least four ads before the game aired, including a commercial for Airborne cold remedy that would have included a shot of Mickey Rooney's bare bottom.

Anheuser-Busch, the game's biggest advertiser and a Super Bowl sponsor for nearly 20 years, let NFL officials preview one of its planned ads, also a spoof on last year's Jackson debacle. In it, a stagehand, presumably working the half-time show, uses Jackson's outfit to get a better grip while uncapping a Bud Light. He rips the garment and then tries to repair it with tape.

The NFL wasn't pleased and so Anheuser-Busch voluntarily withdrew it.

But the football league didn't get to pre-screen the GoDaddy.com ad, which Fox approved beforehand.

After the spot first aired, NFL officials objected and Fox took the highly unusual step of pulling a second airing of the commercial, set for late in the fourth quarter.

Yesterday an irate Parsons said he expects a full refund "at the very least" and issued veiled threats about suing the network over the cancelled ad. Parsons said that, because the ad did not run as planned, his company lost credibility and an even bigger lift to its site traffic.

But as the traffic spike suggests, GoDaddy.com has reaped some rewards from the ruckus.

Even before the game aired, Parsons was crowing on his personal Web log about all the free publicity the company's Super Bowl plans had already generated.

"The media attention that we have received up to the Super Bowl has been far and away more than any of us at Go Daddy would have dared to dream," wrote Parsons.

2 questions

1. How is it possible that the NFL did not screen every ad that was going to be run?
2. This one is for the lawyers in FOFC. Does GoDaddy.com have a legal claim to a refund for the cancelled commercial?

[JonInMiddleGA]

Q.#1 -- because they really don't have an expressed right to do so? Or, I'd be surprised if they did, since they aren't buying the time from Fox, Fox bought the rights from them.

Q.#2 -- this one, I'm pretty sure, will revolve around the wording of the specific adv. contract they signed. There's a lot of pretty standard language in those things (some of which has been around for some 40 yrs or more) and one very typical clause basically gives the station the right not to air any spot they don't want to air, with the only remedy being that they won't charge you for the spot. I have never seen anything that would lead me to believe that network contracts (vs station contracts) would be any different.

[QuikSand]

Originally Posted by miami_fan

Does GoDaddy.com have a legal claim to a refund for the cancelled commercial?

I'm no lawyer, but I suspect it went something like this.

Offer: we want you to run our commercial two times, please
Acceptance: okay, we will run your commercial two times
Consideration: okay, here's a bag of money

And if so, they have an outstanding case to get their refund.

[Fonzie]

The lady featured in that commercial was quite attractive.

[Draft Dodger]

so, does that explain why we got 2 of those stupid frozen Mustang commercials in a row?

and, yeah, GoDaddy is going to get their money back.

[Draft Dodger]

Originally Posted by Fonzie

The lady featured in that commercial was quite attractive.

and she had a great set

[miami_fan]

Originally Posted by JonInMiddleGA

Q.#1 -- because they really don't have an expressed right to do so? Or, I'd be surprised if they did, since they aren't buying the time from Fox, Fox bought the rights from them.

I figured they would have inspected every facet of the program after last year

[TLK]

not to threadjack this topic.... but I'd take the Tabasco chickie without much thought...

[Dutch]

And she could "do this" really well.

[Ksyrup]

That's a pretty good use of $2.4M, but why not save the $2.4M, create an ad that obviously won't get shown, and do a (much cheaper) press blitz professing ignorance as to what is so offensive about lesbian jello wrestling, and offering the website where people can judge for themselves.

Probably get the same amount of traffic for a fraction of the cost.

[Fonzie]

Originally Posted by TheLionKing

not to threadjack this topic.... but I'd take the Tabasco chickie without much thought...

She was also a very attractive woman. I would, if I got to know her well enough and felt there was some future to our relationship, consider mating with her.

[DaddyTorgo]

i've been looking for you all trying to find out what her real name is, but so far I havn't come up with anything. Has anyone??

p.s. it's not "Nikki Capelli"

[CamEdwards]

Originally Posted by Draft Dodger

and she had a great set

please pass the peanut butter. thx.

[TazFTW]

Originally Posted by DaddyTorgo

i've been looking for you all trying to find out what her real name is, but so far I havn't come up with anything. Has anyone??

p.s. it's not "Nikki Capelli"

Candice Michelle as I mentioned in the other thread

[Draft Dodger]

Originally Posted by CamEdwards

please pass the peanut butter. thx.

I'm going to have sex in a couple of weeks.
just wanted you to know that.

[ISiddiqui]

Originally Posted by miami_fan

Official Internet sites for Olympus, Apple iTunes, Cadillac, and Ameriquest Mortgage -- also the half-time show sponsor -- also logged big, albeit smaller, increases in traffic after their commercials aired, according to comScore.

Wasn't the ad that talked about iTunes a Napster ad which said they were better than Apple?

[DaddyTorgo]

Originally Posted by TazFTW

Candice Michelle as I mentioned in the other thread

how'd you find that out Taz? i must be slipping in my skills

[Draft Dodger]

Originally Posted by ISiddiqui

Wasn't the ad that talked about iTunes a Napster ad which said they were better than Apple?

there were also a couple of Pepsi iTunes ads.

[DaddyTorgo]

Un-freakin-believable. I'm increasing it every time it happens from now on, and perhaps some people will get the picture. Three weeks.

--Ben

[TazFTW]

Originally Posted by DaddyTorgo

how'd you find that out Taz? i must be slipping in my skills

Found it at another board and she looked familiar (she's currently employed by the WWE).

[DaddyTorgo]

aaaah. well there...at least i'm making up for it with my golden links to save you boys some time

[JeffNights]

SHES A PORN STAR. HOLY SHIT.. Fox let this one slip lol

[Karim]

She posed for Playboy online in 2002 and now I guess she's an "actress".

[albionmoonlight]

I certainly don't want to threadjack this back on-topic, but I wonder about stuff like this.

I can see a site like godaddy getting lots of benefit from a Super Bowl ad. Most people don't know what they do. They hear the name (and, in the back of their minds, associate it with the pretty young lady) and decide to check it out after the Super Bowl, in part to see what the heck it is that they do.

But how does this work for Bud Light? Who is watching the Super Bowl and says to themselves "I need to check out this 'Bud Light' thing about which people seem so excited." Is it really worth 2.4 million to put the product that is in our face 50 times a day in our face one more time?

Now, back to your regularly scheduled porn actress discussion.

[Fritz]

Originally Posted by albionmoonlight

I certainly don't want to threadjack this back on-topic, but I wonder about stuff like this.

I can see a site like godaddy getting lots of benefit from a Super Bowl ad. Most people don't know what they do. They hear the name (and, in the back of their minds, associate it with the pretty young lady) and decide to check it out after the Super Bowl, in part to see what the heck it is that they do.

But how does this work for Bud Light? Who is watching the Super Bowl and says to themselves "I need to check out this 'Bud Light' thing about which people seem so excited." Is it really worth 2.4 million to put the product that is in our face 50 times a day in our face one more time?

I think they do it just to keep a positive feeling about the brand in people's mind.

I worked for a Market Research firm once upon a time, and based on phone interviews, I would say the brands that hammer you over and over again with ads are very effective in creating an atmosphere where a consumer associates a product (lite beer) with quality (good) with a usage (every day or of thing) with a product name (bud lite).

[Ben E Lou]

Originally Posted by DaddyTorgo

btw...for those interested, {EDIT BY SKYDOG} here are two links to porn sites

Just damn. Maybe THIS thread should have been the one I titled, "Will they *EVER* learn???

Three weeks. Maybe if I keep bumping up the punishment they will.

[Ben E Lou]

Originally Posted by Draft Dodger

THE LINK IN THE NEXT POST IS NOT SAFE FOR WORK

It is now.

[Aylmar]

I knew I should have written that link down this morning. Dammit!!

[stevew]

Pretty decent photos of the "go Daddy's" on her webpage.