Superbowl-ads.com Article Archive

http://www.adage.com/news_and_features/deadline/index.html

Employment site HotJobs.com is in talks with actor Joe Pesci to supply the voice of its new advertising character, the hand, to star in the site’s coming Super Bowl commercials. The company, which recently underwent an initial public offering, is also exploring partly compensating Mr. Pesci for his role with stock options. HotJobs’ estimated $20 million radio, outdoor and online effort started Dec. 12 with print ads in five major newspapers from McCann-Erickson Worldwide, Troy, Mich., leading up to the Super Bowl spots.

http://www.sfgate.com:80/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2000/09/13/BU63332.DTL

KATHLEEN PENDER

San Francisco Chronicle

Blowing your advertising wad on the Super Bowl was a winning strategy for dot-com companies in 1999, but a bad call in 2000.

A study by Thomas Weisel Partners shows that none of the publicly held Internet-related companies that advertised on this year’s Super Bowl has seen its stock price increase since the NFL championship aired Jan. 30.

The most “successful” was E- Trade, whose shares had slumped only 13 percent as of Friday. E- Trade aired three spots, including one of the funniest with a man being rushed through the emergency room because he had money coming out the wazoo.

Shares in three Super Bowl advertisers — Healtheon/WebMD, Kforce.com and MicroStrategy — are down more than 70 percent. During the same period, the Dow Jones composite Internet index was off 19 percent.

Of the 10 private companies that advertised, two managed to go public, but their stocks have fallen like a bad punt — Pets.com is down 91 percent since its first-day close, Netpliance is down 82 percent.

Seven of the private companies are still private and one — Epidemic.com — failed to secure a second round of financing and threw in the towel in June.

“In 1999, only two dot-com ads appeared on the Super Bowl — Monster.com and Hotjobs.com. Those are the two major online recruiting sites today,” says Weisel analyst Perry Boyle.

This year, however, nearly 20 percent of the 61 television spots were gobbled up by Net companies, which paid $2.2 million on average for a 30-second spot.

“The problem was clutter,” Boyle says. But he doesn’t call it an unmitigated disaster. Although all of the advertisers’ stocks are down, some aren’t down nearly as much as their peers.

E-Trade stock has outperformed Ameritrade, TD Waterhouse, Schwab and DLJdirect.

EDS, the information-technology consulting firm that ran the humorous “herding cats,” commercial, has done better than competitors Scient and Viant, but worse than Sapient.

Hotjobs.com, down 31 percent, “has definitely outperformed Kforce (another Super Bowl advertiser) Topjobs.net and Headhunter.com.”

Monster.com, which advertised again this year, is part of TMP Worldwide. It’s reportedly searching for a new advertising agency.

MINDING THE OLYMPICS: Ironically, Boyle says the company that has done the best, relative to its peers, is LifeMinders.com. This company aired the self-proclaimed “Worst Ad on the Super Bowl.” And it was, according to some surveys.

It advertised “highly personalized e-mail” in typewriter script against a yellow background while “Chopsticks” played in the background.

LifeMinders stock is down 38 percent, but Boyle thinks it could get a big boost from the Sydney Olympics, which start Friday.

The company does what is known as “permission marketing” or “opt-in e-mail.”

It has about 18 million members who have registered to receive weekly e-mails with content personalized to their interests, such as gardening, movies or pets. The e- mails, which look like Web pages, are free, but they’re surrounded by (surprise!) paid advertising. It sends simpler messages to wireless devices.

During the summer games, the Herndon, Va., company will send daily, personalized e-mail updates to users who register through the official Olympic Web site, www.olympics.com. Users can choose which events, athletes or teams they want to read about.

IBM, which runs the official Olympic site, “has estimated that 10 million to 30 million people will sign up for these e-mails,” Boyle says.

These people won’t automatically become LifeMinders members, but they can choose to do so.

“We’re estimating that 1 million to 2 million will stick,” says Lisa Haas, an analyst with Wit Soundview.

“They’re at 18 million members now. We estimate they’ll have 19.5 million” at the end of the third quarter. “That’s slightly ahead of (company) guidance. If they come out at the end of the third quarter and greatly exceed membership estimates, that’ll be a positive” for the stock, she says.

Boyle points out that America Online has only 23 million subscribers.

LifeMinders doesn’t get any subscription revenues, like AOL does. But it does get about $4 per member per year in advertising revenues.

Boyle estimates that the company will generate $60 million in revenue this year and break even during the first quarter of next year.

Eventually, he says, the company can generate $10 or more in revenue per customer by selling its own products such as credit cards.

Its biggest challenge is the same one facing all e-media companies, “bringing traditional advertisers into the new-media world.”

A slowdown in the growth of Internet advertising has hurt all dot-com stocks lately, even the big ones like Yahoo and AOL.

“But LifeMinders has an advantage,” Boyle says. “It has a very demonstrable superior response rates at a lower cost than the portals.”

Haas agrees. “We like the fact that LifeMinders has scale. It has permission or consent from 18 million members. A lot of companies are having weakness in online advertising. We think e-mail is a better platform long term.”

ANOTHER WEB-AD WARNING? Internet bulls are quick to point out that the absolute level of Internet advertising is not declining, merely the rate of growth. But a report issued this week calls that into question.

AdZone Interactive reported that U.S. Internet advertising during August fell 7.6 percent, to $1.41 billion, from $1.54 billion during July 2000.

This was the first month-to- month decline this year. The dip could be seasonal; August is generally a weak advertising month. There’s no comparison because AdZone only started tracking Web advertising in January.

AdZone Chief Executive Officer Charles Cardona points out that July was a very strong month: Estimated Web ad revenues jumped 21 percent from June.

In Europe, which he says is a couple of years behind the United States, Internet advertising continued to grow during August, reaching $109 million, up 11 percent from July.

Critics say AdZone’s survey is flawed because it doesn’t measure actual ad expenditures. It monitors Web site advertising and uses standard rate cards to estimate revenues. Even so, it’s worth noting.

Net Worth runs Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Fridays. E-mail Kathleen Pender at kpender@sfchronicle .com.

Here’s a look at what happened to Internet-related companies since they advertised on the Super Bowl XXXIV telecast in January.

PUBLIC COMPANIES

Change in company stock

Company price since Jan. 31

EDS -27%

E-Trade -13

Healtheon/WebMD -74

HotJobs.com -31

Kforce.com -71

Lifeminders.com -38

Motorola -25

MicroStrategy -76

(x) As ofFriday

PRIVATE COMPANIES THAT WENT PUBLIC

Company Change in stock since first-day close

Netpliance(a) -82%

Pets.com(b) -91%

(a) – IPO on March 17

(b) – IPO on Feb. 11

PRIVATE COMPANIES THAT REMAINED PRIVATE

Agillion

AutoTrader.com

Britannica.com

Computer.com

Epidemic.com

OnMoney.com

OurBeginning.com

Oxygen Media

PRIVATE COMPANY THAT WENT OUT OF BUSINESS

Epidemic.com

Source: Thomas Weisel Partners

http://www.pioneerplanet.com:80/seven-days/1/sports/docs/022905.htm

FROM NEWS SERVICES

Small-market teams don’t necessarily hurt Super Bowl ratings — especially when the game goes down to the final play.

St. Louis’ stirring 23-16 victory over Tennessee on Sunday night drew a 43.2 television rating and a 62 share on ABC, up 7 percent from last year. That makes it the 19th-highest rated among the 34 Super Bowls.

Last year’s game, Denver’s 34-19 victory over Atlanta, received a 40.2 rating and 61 share, the lowest rating since the 1990 game registered a 39.0 rating.

ABC estimated 130,745,000 people watched the game, making it the fifth-most-watched telecast in U.S. history, trailing four other Super Bowls. Last year’s game, broadcast by Fox, was watched by 127.5 million.

The No. 1 program was the 1996 Super Bowl between Dallas and Pittsburgh, watched by 138.5 million. Sunday’s game pushed the final episode of “M*A*S*H,” broadcast by CBS on Feb. 28, 1983, and watched by 121.6 million, out of the top 10 list, which now includes nine Super Bowls and the women’s skating final of the 1994 Winter Olympics.

With two small-market teams, ABC said last week it hoped for a 42.0 rating, but the close game caused ratings to grow throughout the night.

Rams welcomed home: With coach Dick Vermeil riding a wagon pulled by the Anheuser-Busch Clydesdales, tens of thousands of fans lined the streets of downtown St. Louis on Monday evening for a parade honoring the Rams.

Players rode in trucks behind the wagon pulling Vermeil and his wife, Carol. Fans broke into a chant of “MVP” as the truck carrying quarterback Kurt Warner made its way through the throngs of people. Warner is only the sixth player in league history to win the regular-season and Super Bowl MVP awards.

Bishop recovering: Titans officials said strong safety Blaine Bishop, who lay motionless on the turf after a collision in the third quarter Sunday, should have a full recovery from his neck injury.

Bishop was knocked unconscious for about 30 seconds after a collision with Rams tight end Ernie Conwell. He was diagnosed with a strained neck and a concussion.

DeBartolo’s suspension ends: Exiled 49ers co-owner Eddie DeBartolo won’t return to the team any time soon despite the end of his NFL suspension today, a family spokesman said.

“It’s just not in the cards,” said Sam Singer, a spokesman for controlling club owner Denise DeBartolo York, who with her husband, John York, assumed management of the team two years ago when her brother ran into legal problems.

Last March, NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue suspended DeBartolo for the 1999 season because of his involvement in a Louisiana gambling fraud and extortion case and fined him $1 million.

Pro bowl extension: The NFL and Hawaii are close to an agreement to keep the Pro Bowl in the islands through 2005. The game has been played in Honolulu the past 20 years, and the current contract ends after the 2001 game.

Starr backs renovation: Saying his love for the Green Bay Packers goes “beyond words,” Hall of Fame quarterback Bart Starr said he is confident the team’s proposed $295 million renovation of Lambeau Field is the right decision.

“If you are going to preserve the franchise, what we have embarked on is the right course, a correct course and the thing to do at this time,” Starr told Wisconsin reporters in a television satellite hookup from his business office in Birmingham, Ala.

The event was part of the Packers’ campaign to rally public support for improvements that the team says must be made for the franchise to stay competitive.

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Total unique visitors to their sites for Jan. 30-31 compared to the average of the previous three Sunday-Monday periods.

http://www.salon.com:80/tech/log/2000/02/03/epidemic/index.html

Epidemic.com, which compensates people for spamming their friends, is making me ill.

By Janelle Brown

A man emerges from a toilet stall in a fancy hotel restroom. He heads to the sink, washes his hands — and the towel boy immediately hands him a dollar. He climbs into an elevator and blows his nose; a woman standing beside him nonchalantly hands him a dollar.

Wouldn’t it be great if you could get paid for something you already do? This is the message of a TV ad for Epidemic.com, a new Internet start-up whose name is apparently a play on viral marketing. Of course, the subtext of the spot, one of the flood of forgettable dot-com ads during the Super Bowl on Sunday, was that Epidemic will pay you to do something you already do.

What Epidemic didn’t specify, however, was just which task it would pay you for (it’s not using the toilet or blowing your nose, though that shouldn’t surprise you.) Epidemic wants to pay you for sending e-mail — but only if you agree to include graphical ads in your e-mail. Yes, if you agree to configure your e-mail to include a number of animated “epiAds,” you can attempt to profit off your friends.

The way it works is this: You download a little program called epiNabler, a plug-in application that interacts with your e-mail software (such as Outlook, Eudora or Hotmail). Whenever you send an e-mail from this point on, your messages will include a number of graphical ads down the side. If the recipients of your e-mail click on those ads and continue through and buy something, you get a small percentage of the sale (the site doesn’t reveal just how much of a commission you’ll be making.) Or you can choose to get the profits donated to charity.

The idea, while simple, is incredibly insidious. As if your inbox weren’t already stuffed with enough spam, commercial solicitations and e-mail newsletters stuffed with text ads, now your friends get to send you huge banner-type ads, too? The premise is terrifying: Your cousin Sally, who only e-mails you once a year, starts e-mailing you daily, hoping to get a commission out of some purchase you make. The mailing lists you belong to may suddenly become rife with members who have signed up for the service. Complete strangers may spam you in hopes that you’ll click and buy.

Epidemic, on its Web site, markets the service as a way to “be the first to tell your friends about the latest brands and coolest trends! Get your friends and family excited about using the Internet!” But really, it’s a new form of spam and unwanted direct-mail marketing. And there’s no opt-in option: If your friends choose to join, you’re stuck getting those ads whether you like it or not.

My only hope is that the millions of dollars that the company spent on that silly and oblique Super Bowl ad will empty the company’s coffers and put them out of business. If Epidemic takes off, I dread what the future — and my in box — may hold. salon.com

About the writer Janelle Brown is a senior writer for Salon Technology.

http://foxmarketwire.com:80/020300/advertise.sml

By Skip Wollenberg

NEW YORK – Those pricey Super Bowl commercials appear to have helped Internet companies attract bigger audiences for their Web sites.

“We couldn’t be more pleased,” Michael Budowski, chief executive of the online wedding stationery outlet Ourbeginning.com, said Wednesday in a refrain echoed by several other first-time, dot-com Super Bowl sponsors.

He said visits to his Web site climbed six times on Sunday and were up four times normal on Monday and Tuesday, and orders were up sharply.

“It was a huge amount of money, but now I can see why it cost that much,” the Web entrepreneur said Wednesday. He said he may be back next year.

Marketing experts will be watching Ourbeginning and the 16 other dot-com companies that appeared on the Super Bowl to see if they can maintain the momentum.

About three dozen network advertisers overall paid a record average of $2.2 million to be on Sunday’s Super Bowl telecast, in which the St. Louis Rams defeated the Tennessee Titans 23-16.

ABC estimated the game and the ads were seen at least in part by more than 130.7 million people, the fifth-biggest audience for any TV telecast.

The Internet audience for Web sites maintained by Super Bowl advertisers rose 15.7 percent in the 24 hours after the Super Bowl telecast, according to Nielsen/NetRatings, an Internet measurement service. The increase was 50 percent larger than the 10.7 percent rise in the overall Internet audience, it said.

Among the strongest performers, the service said, were Oxygen.com, a Web site designed for women, and the job-search site Hotjobs.com.

Oxygen Media, which operates the Oxygen.com site and launched a new cable TV channel on Wednesday, had run an ad in the Super Bowl which showed newborn girls who had discarded their pink knit hats in the hospital nursery.

Its Web site had an audience of 173,689 unique visitors – repeat visits by the same person don’t count – on Monday, nearly matching the 189,812 visitors it had in the entire previous week.

Hotjobs.com, advertising in its second Super Bowl with a commercial featuring its new computer hand icon, had nearly 156,000 visitors on Monday, up 48 percent from its total for the entire week leading to the game.

Richard Johnson, president and chief executive of Hotjobs, said the Super Bowl ad led to “the biggest sustained day of traffic” ever for the site. He said the site was getting one resume every 2.4 seconds a day after the game compared with one every 12 seconds in mid-January. “It was great for us,” he said.

Another Internet measurement service, Media Metrix, said Super Bowl advertiser Web sites posted a 39 percent increase in visitors on Sunday and Monday compared with the average for the same two days in the previous three weeks.

WebMD.com, an Atlanta-based Internet health site that ran a Super Bowl ad featuring Muhammad Ali shadowboxing, was first with 497,000 visitors, up 96 percent, Media Metrix said. Second was Lifeminders.com, which saw its visitors more than double to 491,000.

Its ad boldly declared it was “the worst commercial on the Super Bowl,” but said it was a pro at its business of sending electronic reminders and advertising to subscribers who request them.

After the Lifeminders ad ran, visitor traffic at the site surged as much as 15 times normal, spokesman Scott Sutherland said, and new members signed up at a pace of 5,000 every 15 minutes until midnight.

He said “we’ll consider doing it again.”

The job service Monster.com, which ran an ad that featured the Robert Frost poem “The Road Not Taken,” came in third 414,000 visitors, according to Media Metrix.

Jeff Taylor, founder and chief executiuve of Monster.com, said the job site’s second appearance in the Super Bowl led to records – 4.4 million job searches over a 24-hour period and 19,100 new resumes in a single day.

“It was fantastic. We showed we can use the Super Bowl even as a large player in our space,” he said.

Among the other top finishers were the online broker E-Trade and the World Wrestling Federation’s site.

Marketing experts say the Super Bowl advertisers have to keep advertising and making sure their Web sites deliver as promised if they are to take advantage of the visibility achieved in the telecast.

Doug McFarland, general manager at Media Metrix, said Monster.com and Hotjobs.com each “did very good jobs of holding their audience” since last year’s Super Bowl.

“The interesting thing will be how well will this group do,” he said.

Total unique visitors to their sites for Jan. 30-31 compared to the average of the previous three Sunday-Monday periods.

 Rank 
 Advertiser 
 Avg. number 
 of visitors 
 Jan. 30-31 
 visitors 
 Percent 
 increase 
  
  All sites 
 2,895,000 
 4,016,000 
 39% 
  
 1 
 WEBMD.COM 
 254,000 
 497,000 
 96% 
  
 2 
 LIFEMINDERS 
 210,000 
 491,000 
 134% 
  
 3 
 MONSTER.COM 
 396,000 
 414,000 
 5% 
  
 4 
 ETRADE.COM 
 436,000 
 412,000 
 -6% 
  
 5 
 WWF.COM 
 290,000 
 353,000 
 22% 
  
 6 
 HOTJOBS.COM 
 83,000 
 282,000 
 240% 
  
 7 
 SCHWAB 
 190,000 
 215,000 
 13% 
  
 8 
 OXYGEN MEDIA 
 148,000 
 196,000 
 32% 
  
 9 
 WSJ.COM 
 133,000 
 183,000 
 38% 
  
 10 
 PETS.COM 
 38,000 
 156,000 
 311% 
  
 11 
 COMPUTER.COM 
 - 
 155,000 
 - 
  
 12 
 KFORCE.COM 
 4,000 
 108,000 
 2,600% 
  
 13 
 BRITANNICA.COM 
 64,000 
 98,000 
 53% 
  
 14 
 OURBEGINNING 
 9,000 
 98,000 
 989% 
  
 15 
 FEDEX.COM 
 55,000 
 93,000 
 69% 
 

SOURCE: Media Metrix

From: MediaPost via email

While dot-com ads proliferated this year’s Super Bowl telecast, a study released last week by D’Arcy Masius Benton & Bowles in St. Louis – http://www.darcyww.com – indicates that at $2 million per 30-second spot, the return on investment was at best fleeting for most of them. In fact, only 17% of the respondents D’Arcy surveyed who watched the Super Bowl were able to recall any dot-com advertising after 30 days.

E*Trade was the leader in total awareness, garnering 57%. Pets.com came in second with 44% total awareness and Monster.com came in third with 37%. Not surprisingly, awareness of dot-com advertisers was higher among younger Super Bowl viewers, especially the 18-34 year-old group.

On the lower end of the awareness spectrum were brands for which the Super Bowl appears to be the focus of their marketing efforts or at least the kick-off. Epidemic.com received only a 4% total awareness and OurBeginning.com, which had not spent any money on advertising until the Super Bowl, received only a 6% awareness. So did Lifeminders.com, which aired the self-proclaimed “worst commercial on the Super Bowl.”

Mike Flynn, D’Arcy St. Louis Senior Account Planner said looking toward the advertising line-up for the Academy Awards this past weekend, that it looks like many of the advertisers have taken this into consideration and are “utilizing the Oscar telecast as part of their ongoing marketing program.”

http://MarketingMarketing.com

Steal Super Bowl Advertising Victories From Budweiser and Mountain Dew

ATLANTA–(BUSINESS WIRE)– Popular Super Bowl Ads that Don’t Sell Brands are Dethroned in Findings Presented by Sergio Zyman and MarketingMarketing.com

Sergio Zyman and his Internet company, MarketingMarketing.com, today announced that consumers have crowned kforce.com and Mission to Mars champions of this year’s Super Bowl advertising derby.

The kforce.com spot bested all other competitors by registering a 722% increase in purchase intent, more than any other ad aired during the Super Bowl broadcast. Advertising for the feature film Mission to Mars also turned in very strong results, delivering a 19.7 point increase in purchase intent, the largest increase in absolute terms of all the ads aired. Sergio Zyman, the former Chief Marketing Officer at Coca-Cola, will discuss the full research results and field questions in a free online cybercast on Thursday, February 3rd at 4:00 pm EST. Visit MarketingMarketing.com to register.

These research findings contrast sharply with some of those conducted and reported by USA TODAY, which rates Super Bowl ads annually based on how much viewers like them. USA TODAY recently named Budweiser and Mountain Dew the victors in Sunday’s Super Bowl advertising showdown based on their survey of 273 adults during the game. However, Sergio Zyman’s MarketingMarketing.com research found that the Budweiser spot chosen by USA TODAY generated only a slight increase in purchase intent among viewers. The Mountain Dew ad was found to have reduced viewer purchase intent by 15%. Therefore these Super Bowl ads are unlikely to generate additional sales for their brands.

“Advertising that doesn’t get consumers to buy more of your product is, by definition, a dud,” said Sergio Zyman. “The sole purpose of marketing is to get more people to buy more of your product, more often, for more money,” he explains. “When you spend more than $2 million each time you air a spot during the Super Bowl, you sure better be selling more product. That’s why our research focused on pre-exposure versus post-exposure purchase intent,” he said. “Going forward, it’s important that marketers get focused on developing ads that move product, not just make people feel good,” he added.

The MarketingMarketing.com research was conducted on 51 of the advertising spots that were aired during the Super Bowl broadcast. The study was fielded by Penn, Schoen & Berland, a highly respected political polling firm, and involved a total of 1450 adults. The study has a margin or error of approximately +/- 6%.

MarketingMarketing.com is the definitive online destination for marketing professionals. Its mission is to empower world class marketing by enabling professional marketers to build their knowledge and capability, define and position their brands, execute with the best tools and resources, and manage their careers like a brand. The Atlanta-based firm was recently founded by Sergio Zyman.

http://www.volvotrucks.volvo.com/pr/980130.htm

Greensboro, NC —

Volvo Trucks North America, Inc.’s Super Bowl advertisement — its first television commercial and first entry by a commercial truck manufacturer into Super Bowl advertising — ranked highest among automotive-related companies, based on USA Today’s Super Bowl Ad Meter. Volvo Trucks’ 30-second spot was also ranked first among business-to-business advertisers during the Jan. 25 game.

Based on USA Today’s poll of viewers, Volvo Trucks bucked the trend for companies in the automotive category. Historically, commercials in this category have been ranked among the five lowest. Overall, the commercial outperformed household names like Coke, Nike, Federal Express and General Motors, ranking 27th of 52.

“With the right business strategies and products, advertising in the Super Bowl is an investment that pays off,” said Marc Gustafson, president and CEO. “As early as the morning after the game, retail traffic at our dealers had increased. These results show that our unique approach to the commercial truck market is on target and that it will help fuel our growth in 1998.”

When producing the commercial, Volvo Trucks faced the challenge of addressing two audiences — nine million people employed in the trucking industry and 130 million general consumers.

“We know the main message was delivered to the trucking industry, including three million drivers,” Gustafson said. “The survey results show we also met our secondary objective of reaching general consumers with the message that Volvo makes trucks, too.”

Volvo Trucks’ spot aired early in the fourth quarter when the game was tied. “We couldn’t have asked for a better game to reach the attention of viewers,” said Jim Lesinski, director of marketing communications and research. “For 30 seconds, the trucking profession took center stage in over 46 million households across North America.”

“When we made the commitment for the commercial, we recognized the opportunity to not only promote Volvo, but also to paint a positive image for our industry in front of 140 million people. That’s why Gus was portrayed as a friendly, successful, road-wise professional. He represents the type of truckers the Volvo 770 was designed for.”

The spot, titled “Road Sage”, features Gus, a friendly trucking professional who shares his insights from the road. As he comfortably drives a Volvo 770 along a desert highway, Gus offers several bits of priceless wisdom such as, “A haircut shouldn’t cost more than your hat”, and “Always drive the best truck you can.”

Gus represents the kind of drivers who operate Volvo trucks. He’s smart. He understands the importance and value of selecting the right piece of equipment to get the job done. And, he’s not afraid to break away from the pack.

According to Gustafson, Volvo Trucks is actively considering whether to become a perennial Super Bowl advertiser. “Early indications show this effort will boost the image of the Volvo brand and boost sales of Volvo trucks. If they hold true, let’s just say there’s a good chance we’ll be back.”

The commercial was part of the six-month “Best Drive in the Game” promotion, which also featured Super Bowl Truck Stop Parties for truckers at 40 locations in the United States. The promotion concludes in March at the industry’s largest trade show, when a Volvo 770 truck, valued at $120,000, will be awarded to the winner of the “Best Drive in the Game” Sweepstakes.

Volvo Trucks North America, Inc. manufactures Class 8 Volvo trucks and tractors. The company leads the heavy truck industry in the areas of safety research and development, quality manufacturing processes and environmental care. The company also markets Volvo heavy-duty diesel engines, transmissions, axles and rear suspensions. Headquartered in Greensboro, N.C., the company is a subsidiary of AB Volvo.

http://live.altavista.com/scripts/editorial.dll?eeid=1469180&eetype=article&render=y

Total unique Internet audience increased 10.7%, from 23.5 million to 26.1 million.

NEW YORK–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Between Sunday, January 30 and Monday, January 31, the total unique Internet audience increased 10.7%, from 23.5 million to 26.1 million.

The driving force behind the two day growth were the Super Bowl advertisers who experienced an overnight increase of 15.7% in unique audience, from 1.75 million to 2.03 million, according to Nielsen//NetRatings, the Internet measurement service from Nielsen Media Research and NetRatings, Inc. (Nasdaq:NTRT).

Leading the charge were Oxygen.com, an online network for women, and HotJobs.com and Monster.com, both of which are Internet-based career solutions companies. On Monday, January 31, Oxygen.com had a unique audience of nearly 174,000. In comparison, Oxygen.com’s total unique audience for the entire week of January 24 was approximately 190,000. HotJobs.com made a similar leap in unique audience on the day after the Super Bowl with 156,000 unique visitors. In comparison, HotJobs.com’s total traffic for the week of January 24 was approximately 328,000. Meanwhile, Monster.com reached a unique audience of over 251,000 on Monday, which was 39.6% above its average of 180,000 per day during the week of January 24.

“Dot.Com companies who advertised on Super Bowl XIV had the challenge of balancing style and substance,” said Allen Weiner, Vice President of Analytical Services for NetRatings. “In a single 30-second spot, advertisers had to grab the viewer’s attention while conveying a clear value proposition and reason to visit their site. Those who were able to accomplish these goals will be rewarded with sustained traffic gains and find themselves book marked for repeat usage.”

Sports Sites Pick up Steam

The total traffic for sports related Web sites increased by 18.0% on Super Bowl Sunday compared to the previous Sunday, January 23. For the week beginning January 24, Superbowl.com’s unique audience shot up 222.2% while Sportsline.com had a gain of 21.3%.

Table 1. Daily Unique Audience Size and Average Time Spent for Sports Sites -0- *T

Date

Unique Audience

Time per Person

(hrs:min:sec)

——————————————————–

Jan. 23

1,569,813

0:06:44

——————————————————–

Jan. 24

1,120,041

0:07:54

——————————————————–

Jan. 25

1,111,630

0:05:57

——————————————————–

Jan. 26

903,492

0:06:18

——————————————————–

Jan. 27

865,786

0:07:22

——————————————————–

Jan. 28

977,915

0:07:12

——————————————————–

Jan. 29

1,210,911

0:06:49

——————————————————–

Jan. 30

1,852,040

0:06:51

——————————————————–

*T -0-

Note: sports sites measured included CNNSi.com, FoxSports.com, NFL.com, Rivals.com, SIKids.com, Sportingnews.com, Sportsline.com, Superbowl.com, SuperbowlXIV.org, ABCMNF.go.com, ABCSports.go.com, Espn.go.com, Sports.Excite.com, Sports.Yahoo.com Source: Nielsen//NetRatings, January 2000

About Nielsen//NetRatings

Nielsen//NetRatings, the audience measurement service from Nielsen Media Research and NetRatings, Inc., collects data from more than 39,000 panelists as they use the Internet at home. The Nielsen//NetRatings panel is the largest media research sample of at-home Internet users currently under measurement. Nielsen//NetRatings uses unique technology capable of measuring both Internet use and advertising to provide the most timely, accurate and comprehensive Internet usage data and advertising information in the industry. For more information, please visit www.nielsen-netratings.com.

http://partners.nytimes.com/library/financial/columns/020200superbowl-adcol.html ?AltaVistaRefId=y_WLmY_WEFnnnnFnFl

Related Article Advertising: Addenda By STUART ELLIOTT

Every year after the Super Bowl, Madison Avenue assesses the performance of the advertisers that spent the huge sums required to run commercials during the game. This time, with Super Bowl XXXIV being considered the first Dot-Com Bowl — 17 of the 36 companies sponsoring the broadcast were related to the Internet — the results are being more closely followed.

That’s particularly true for the dot-com debutantes that used the Super Bowl as their coming-out party, introducing themselves to the estimated 130.75 million Americans who watched the game on ABC. Will viewers now go online to visit the Web sites of the dot-coms? Will the Web sites bear up under increased traffic? Will visitors like what they see? Will they buy anything?

Never mind that no one tracks shoppers at convenience stores the day after the Super Bowl, wondering whether the products of traditional advertisers like Budweiser, Mountain Dew, 7Up and Tropicana are moving off shelves faster. And forget that few, if any, analysts count tickets sold at movie theaters for films advertised during the Super Bowl. The dot-coms are held to different standards, perhaps because of their insistent assertions that there’s no business like e-business.

To that end, several efforts are being made to measure the post-game performance of the dot-com commercials. The most ambitious is a study by Media Metrix, which examined the Internet sites of Super Bowl advertisers to measure the average number of daily unique visitors (people who visit a Web site) before and after the game.

“It either worked or it didn’t,” said Doug McFarland, senior vice president and general manager at Media Metrix. “You either did very well or you had no change.”

“Of course,” he added, “the real story will be watching these sites over the next six to eight months, to see if what worked for Hotjobs.com and Monster.com can happen again. Getting a nice spike is nice, but how many will remember the name and come back?” Mr. McFarland’s reference was to two dot-coms, both operators of job-search sites, which first captured the public’s attention by advertising during Super Bowl XXXIII in January 1999.

In some instances, the Media Metrix survey showed that traffic to dot-com sites soared on Sunday and Monday compared with the average figures for the three weeks before the game — climbing sharply from few or even no measurable visitors before to thousands or tens of thousands after. Such showings were made by companies like Computer.com; Hotjobs.com; Kforce.com, part of Romac International; Microstrategy; and Ourbeginning.com.

“We’re thrilled,” said Joe Payne, chief marketing officer at Microstrategy in Vienna, Va., a software maker that ran two commercials, created in-house, during the first and fourth quarters of the game.

“If the Super Bowl helps us to do one deal,” he added, “it’ll pay for itself.” Super Bowl advertisers paid a record average of $2.2 million for each 30 seconds of commercial time.

Other dot-coms that enjoyed substantial gains in Web site traffic, according to the Media Metrix survey, included Britannica.com; Lifeminders.com; Oxygen.com, part of Oxygen Media; Pets.com; WebMD.com, operated by Healtheon/ WebMD; and WSJ.com, part of Dow Jones & Company.

For some Super Bowl dot-coms, traffic to their sites showed little or no change, the survey showed, possibly because they already were “very high profile names,” before their commercials ran, Mr. McFarland said. Those included the E*Trade Group and Monster.com.

Bill Willard, custom analysis director for Media Metrix in Atlanta, identified some Web sites, for newer dot-coms, that registered relatively small gains in visitors, though the percentage increases were high. They included: Epidemic.com, from 9,000 to 30,000 visitors; Lastminutetravel.com, which ran its spot immediately after the game ended, from 6,000 to 27,000 visitors; and Netpliance.com, from no measurable traffic to 8,000 visitors.

And in some instances, the survey found no measurable traffic to the sites of dot-com advertisers after the game. Those included Autotrader.com and OnMoney.com. Media Metrix bases its numbers on the patterns of a panel of 50,000 Web users.

Nine of the 10 sites with the most traffic after the game were dot-coms, the survey showed. The exception was the Web site of World Wrestling Federation Entertainment (www.wwf.com). Other not-coms with good postgame numbers included Federal Express (www.fedex.com); the largest decline was registered by Motorola (www.motorola.com), down 23.5 percent.

Having looked at the traffic to the Web sites of Super Bowl advertisers, how did those sites perform once they began getting hits? That was the province of a study by Keynote Systems, a provider of Web site performance measurement.

“Most of them did pretty well,” said Gene Shklar, vice president for public services at Keynote in San Mateo, Calif., “but nine showed performance anomalies.” Those included the sites of Autotrader.com, Epidemic.com, Kforce.com, Lastminutetravel.com and Universal Pictures, part of the Seagram Company, which advertised two films during the game, “The Nutty Professor II” and “U-571.”

Most sites that experienced “performance degradation” during or after the game were operating normally by yesterday, he added.

“The ones with no problems at all,” Mr. Shklar said, “seemed to be the companies that have done this for a while and learned to scale their Web sites for peak demand.”

“The Super Bowl was a watershed event in the integration of television and the Web,” he added. “When a huge audience glued to the TV screen sees a commercial with a U.R.L., they will get up and access the site. You know the Web’s a monster when you see a Budweiser ad and ‘www.budweiser.com’ is at the bottom of the screen.”

According to another survey, by Harris Interactive, two-thirds of Internet users reported watching the Super Bowl, but the dot-com advertising had only relatively low awareness and effectiveness among them.

For instance, when survey respondents were asked specifically about certain dot-coms advertisers, so-called aided awareness, only four dot-coms scored in double digits: E*Trade, 54 percent; Pets.com, 41 percent; Monster.com, 24 percent; and Hotjobs.com, 11 percent. All were significant advertisers before the Super Bowl.

When the Harris Interactive Intermedia Pulse study asked if a commercial “made you plan to visit” the dot-com’s Web site, the highest response, at 38 percent, came for Britannica.com, which ran a commercial in the third quarter by Deutsch Inc. The other top scorers were: Autotrader.com, 33 percent; Computer.com and Hotjobs.com, tied at 27 percent; and Kforce.com, 24 percent.

The rest of the responses: Oxygen.com, 21 percent; Pets.com, 20 percent; Monster.com, 18 percent; Etrade.com, 17 percent; and Lifeminders.com, 12 percent.

Other surveys, in the spirit of Dot-Com Bowl I, were taken online, asking computer users to rate spots.

Adcritic.com, a Web site operated since the last Super Bowl by Peter Beckman, a self-described ad fan, is asking visitors to vote for favorite spots. The leader yesterday afternoon was the “Bohemian Rhapsody” parody spot for Mountain Dew, sold by the Pepsi-Cola Company unit of PepsiCo and created by BBDO New York, part of the BBDO Worldwide unit of the Omnicom Group.

No. 2 was the E*Trade monkey commercial about “wasting” ad dollars, by Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, also part of Omnicom. The No. 3 spot was the “cat herders” for EDS, by Fallon McElligott, which was leading in a separate poll by Yahoo, the portal Web site, at www.yahoo.com/promotions /superspots.

A Microstrategy spot was second in the Yahoo poll yesterday afternoon. The Pets.com spot — by the San Francisco office of TBWA/ Chiat/Day, part of the TBWA Worldwide unit of Omnicom — was third.

http://www.adweek.com/daily/February/aw/aw022000-1.asp

By Mallorre Dill and Eleftheria Parpis

With Super Bowl XXIV commercials commanding more than $2 million per 30 seconds, viewers pinned to the game were treated to a bevy of dot-com advertisers who hoped to make a grand super bowl splash.

But according to the results of a national consumer telephone poll, commissioned by Adweek and conducted yesterday by Opinion Research Corp., consumers were most impressed by tried-and-true-beer, soda and animal stories.

Budweiser beer and Pepsico’s Mountain Dew soda topped the list of most memorable and most liked commercials in this year’s game, while most of the Internet advertisers failed to rise above the din. Of the 417 people surveyed, 63% were able to recall a brand that they had seen advertised on the Super Bowl, with Budweiser’s eight spots scoring the highest in both recall and likeability.

Although 18 of the 55 Super Bowl spots advertised dot-coms, only 36% of the viewers polled could recall an Internet brand. E*Trade topped the list.

The overall favorite, Budweiser’s “Rex,” created by DDB, Chicago, shows a dog on a movie set struggling to emote sadness. The actor finally feels the moment and howls after he recalls a day when he ran after Bud truck but collided with a lawn supplies truck instead. Mountain Dew’s ad, featuring a “dew dude” reclaiming his drink from the throat of a Cheetah, came in second.

One of E*trade’s ads, featuring a chimp clapping and tapping his feet to the rhythms of Latin music, garnered mixed reviews. It was third on the list as most favored – and first on the list of least liked – ads. First-time advertiser Computer.com, which debuted its services with testimonials of friends and relatives of the company in a home-video-style spot, was the second least liked.

More complete survey results are scheduled for Adweek’s Feb. 7 editions.

http://www.sacbee.com:80/lifestyle/news/lifestyle01_20000202.html

Anita Creamer

So the Super Bowl was the centerpiece of American existence this past weekend: Loved those EDS cats roaming the range in that frantic feline roundup. Too clever. Loved Mountain Dew’s “Bohemian Rhapsody.”

The thing is, of course, that football for many of us is largely superfluous to the Super Bowl.

That’s been true for many, many Roman numerals now.

It’s been true for more celebrity-wailed renditions of “The Star-Spangled Banner” than we care to remember. It’s been true through the long years of dancers and fireworks and balloons in all those hugely expensive yet consistently weird halftime shows.

Unless you’re from St. Louis or Tennessee — or unless you’re devoted to the idea of the Super Bowl as one of the country’s annual milestones, a tribute to the power of TV to unite us on our living-room couches, slurping down chili — football wasn’t the point of Sunday’s Super Bowl at all.

A well-known fact: You can like football and still not care too much about the Super Bowl.

Leaving aside the issue of the game itself, then, the point of the show is to sell. It’s business.

The point, in other words, is the ads.

That’s no big revelation: At upwards of $2 million for a 30-second spot, how could ad revenue not be the point? That’s more than $70,000 a second — a whole lot of money spent to reach a whole lot of people. The ads are the real game, the game in between the action on the field.

Some people watch only for the ads.

But the question is: What’s the point of these ads?

Other than, you know, as a gauge of pop culture.

It was a dot-com day, an afternoon of entertainment brought to you by Pets.com and Lifeminders.com, Hotjobs.com and Computer.com and another dozen more.coms. Is there anyone in the country who managed to keep all the dot-com ads straight?

Much less figure out what kinds of services most of them were actually trying to sell.

Much less understand how that Epidemic.com guy gets paid for sneezing in the elevator and doing his business in the bathroom — there’s money to be made in bodily functions? — or grasp how those Netpliance geeks with tape on their glasses have anything to say that we need to hear.

Even if you remember the classiness of the commercial featuring Robert Frost’s poetry, you may not remember which dot-com it was promoting.

It’s easy enough to recognize Volvo and Budweiser and Federal Express as separate corporate entities, but many of the dot-coms ran together.

One slogan faded into the next in a big dot-com blur.

But about that Pets.com sock puppet that followed people around, singing to them about their pets: The bizarro puppet with boundary issues was cute.

And in ads as in dating, cute and funny count. But cute had better have a little substance behind it, a little meaning to go along with its quirky edge, or we’ll dump it pronto for the guy driving that gigantic Volvo truck.

Instead, Budweiser brought us a man in a tux delivering a Clydesdale foal, and synchronized swimmers treaded water and pointed and kicked, circling in a pool to promote Visa. Plus, Christopher Reeve was shown rising and walking in a financial services commercial, which somehow seemed more exploitive than respectful or inspiring.

Somewhere along the line, ordinary ads became really expensive minimovies with intricate plots and outstanding production values, worthy of analysis and debate — but aren’t they supposed to make us buy stuff?

It’s the Super Bowl, not Sundance.

If the ads are the point, these ads missed the point of making the sale.

So what are we left with after this year’s Super Bowl? The sheer silly entertainment of “Bohemian Rhapsody” and the kitty roundup with the cat-wrangling cowboys.

And this: St. Louis won the game.

Watching Ad Media with Super Bowl in Mind

Welcome to MediaPost’s first annual Super Bowl advertising wrap-up. I am your host, Adam Herman. Don’t worry, I’m not going to review each spot that aired. Ad Age, USA Today and a half dozen others have already covered that. As always, we take a unique point of view at the MONITOR and to paraphrase Masha, I’ll be “Watching Ad Media with Super Bowl in Mind.”

All right then, time for the kick off.

What was the biggest story going into the Super Bowl, besides the rags-to-riches tale of Kurt Warner, the St. Louis Rams MVP quarterback? It was the price for a 30-second national spot. A whopping $2,200,000 or about $73,333 per second. Was it worth it? Well, keeping the effectiveness of creative execution out of the equation for the moment, I would probably say yes.

What other event, and what other medium besides network television could reach 100+ million men, women and children simultaneously and hold their collective attention for four hours? Heck, half the people I know who watched the first half of the game were more interested in the commercials than the score. So, despite the rapid emergence of the Internet as an advertising medium and ever-declining primetime ratings, network television is still the king of all media… at least for event broadcasts.

Last year, two dot.com advertisers – monster.com and hotjobs.com – believed TV was king and bet most of their year’s marketing budgets on a spot or two during the Super Bowl. Was it successful? Aside from dramatic increases in site hits, brand recognition and revenue for these two pioneers, there is one sure way to tell — this year, no less than 16 dot.coms bought HALF the airtime inventory.

It is these brand-starved companies with super-flushed pockets that drove the price per spot up 38% over last year. If Wired Magazine would put on a TV show, I’m sure the advertising lineup would be identical.

On the subject of cross-media, one of the most talked about trends to arise in the past few months has been convergence – the natural synergies that media companies, particularly online and offline, can bring together to create an even stronger marketing and distribution whole.

Well, where was the “convergence” in this year’s Super Bowl broadcast? It certainly wasn’t at ABC. I can hardly remember a mention of the Internet in four hours. I know the network didn’t want to loose viewers, but come on, try a little harder to leverage the abcsport.go.com or espn.go.com websites with their multitude of Super Bowl related content.

Even after the game, ABC could have sent viewers to their websites for recap and analysis. I know I can’t watch a CBS- aired sporting event without being bombarded with mentions of CBS’s sportsline.com. Hey ABC, cross-promoting Regis Philbin 500 times is not convergence.

And what about the fifty or so advertisers? Running a URL at the end of a spot is also not convergence. Even at that minimum, my guess is only about three-quarters of the spots ran a URL. No one created a Victoria Secret type integrated event/commercial that so aptly converged television, publicity and the Internet into one of most talked about marketing ploys of 1999. Agencies and clients were willing to waste millions on dreadful commercials but not spend the money or the time on a single powerful idea that could marry their spots to their websites.

In my opinion, although there were no “breakthrough” spots, there were a few dot.com advertisers that used the halo of the Super Bowl to brand their sites.

The best one by far was E*Trade.com’s “wasted thirty seconds of a singing chimp.” Because it appeared they threw their money away, they could brilliantly tie it back to their core business with the tagline “Well, we just wasted 2 million bucks. What are you doing with your money?” Here, they took the most obvious downside of being a Super Bowl advertiser (the cost) and turned it into the strongest message (invest wisely).

To show how difficult this is to pull off, look at LifeMinders.com who purposely did “the worst ad on the Super Bowl.” However, this poorly conceived text ad barely explained what the site did (I watched it three times and still have no idea what they do). They did get something right – it WAS the worst ad.

Other spots of note: AutoTrader.com using the power of TV to show the speed and diversity of products on their site; and Oxygen Media using virtually no dialogue except crying girl babies, convincingly portraying the site as a “powerful voice for women” that will be heard from soon.

Lastly, the greatest disappointment to me was the two who started it all last year — monster.com and hotjobs.com. I was shocked how off the mark their follow-up campaigns were, especially monster.com. I guess there is always Super Bowl XXXV to look forward to.