Dot-Super Bowl Redux

Last Sunday’s Rams 23, Titans 16 Super Bowl XXXIV thriller will go into the record books as one of the best. Since Apple’s 1984-esque famous advertisement, worldwide television audiences have become serious “ad watchers” during all Super Bowl extravaganzas. Unfortunately, this year’s ad crop was especially disappointing. At a mind-numbing cost averaging $2.2 million for a 30-second spot, approximately 40 advertisers ponied up $135 million to pay for the big party. Almost half of the advertisers were Dot Com companies with money to burn from recent IPOs (initial public offerings). Last year’s lackluster Super Bowl found only a handful of Dot-Coms (Hotjobs.com and Monster.com to name two) with the courage to spend for the exposure to 100 million television viewers.

Dot-Com Bowl

In the January 28 Sunday New York Times, reporter Stewart Elliot called Sunday’s game “The Dot-Com Bowl.” Frankly, of the almost twenty Dot-Coms that ran 30 second (or longer) ads, few were memorable. In fact, unless I had written down the URLs (Uniform Resource Locators) as they appeared on the television screen (often with a small typeface), most would have been forgotten. Before Sunday, I had never visited the sites Kforce.com, Lifeminders.com, MicroStrategy.com, OnMoney.com, OurBeginnings.com, Epidemic.com, Computer.com, Netpliance.com, WWF.com, Agillion.com or others. Each had spent more than $2 million for a mercurial Super Bowl ad in a desperate attempt to become “unforgettable.” Sadly, they failed.

Isolated Spots

For small Dot-Coms, the 30-second Bowl ad cost them almost the entire annual budget. One would think that they would at least sport “our Super Bowl ad” on their Web sites. No. This strongly demonstrates the immaturity of many e-businesses. In fact, almost all the companies who ran ads have Web presence. Yet few of the “super expensive” ads appear on them. WOW!

Riding the Cluetrain

Few e-commerce Web sites carry the Super Bowl ad(s) in download format to help jolt our memories. However, a few are found here:

Oxygen.com. This Oprah Winfrey site premiered a new ad on the Super Bowl. When I saw Oxygen’s offering on television, I had no clue what they sold. It turns out that this site claims to be: “The first Online and on-air Network for women, by women.” It is understandable why I did not remember the ad.

Lifeminders.com. This hokey ad when viewed on the Super Bowl struck me as being particularly bad. However, when viewed on the Web site, this expensive fiasco holds a certain charm. In fact, the Web site asks the surfer: “Was it the worst Super Bowl ad?” I voted twice. First “yes;” but after a second viewing, it received a “no.” Visit the site and memories of this forgettable ad may come flooding back. Remember that you are looking at an ad that cost over two million bucks.

WebMD.com. This Web site stands out. The ads viewed on the Super Bowl can be easily downloaded in either Windows or Real Player format. The Mohammad Ali 30-second spot comes to life again and reinforces the television images. The four 30-second WebMD ads make for good viewing either on the Web or the tube. One slight disappointment experienced on the WebMD site was the obvious absence of an injury report on safety Blaine Bishop (who lay on the turf for almost 10 minutes). Maybe next year WebMD will have “early live” information about player injuries.

EDS.com. This Web site sports the catchy “cat herders” ad. With a whopping 7.8 MB MPEG movie file, the one-minute ad cost the company $5 million to air near the end of the game. A fast connection should be used to download this ad from the site. The ad is well done.

Honorable Mention

The series of Pets.com ads holds particular fascination. During the Super Bowl, a new ad aired. In my book, the quirky nature of the “Pets ads” captures the spirit of Net commerce – just slightly off beat. It is therefore somewhat surprising that Pets.com does not host viewable ads on the Web site. My e-mail suggestion to the Pets.com support line to include the ads to the Web site received a prompt reply from Sean Ramirez. He pointed out that all the ads (Super Bowl and others) are viewable at www.adcritic.com.

The outstanding “E-stunt” of the broadcast was John Elway’s unabashed plug for MVP.com. Elway, Wayne Gretzky and Michael Jordon have just launched this major sports site. Elway should have been charged $150,000 for the two-second outburst and loss of down.

They Pay The Freight

We should start to see better and better Dot-Com ads at the Super Bowl in the years ahead. Tighter integration of television and the Web will drive the refinement. I cannot wait for Dot-Com Bowl II, especially if the game is as exciting as the one played last Sunday.

The Final Irony

HBO wisely delayed the airing of The Sopranos until the end of the Super Bowl. When Tony Soprano punished daughter Meadow by grounding her Discover Card for three weeks, I thought, memorable!

URLs (Uniform Resource Locators) of interest:

http://www.Oxygen.com

http://www.Lifeminders.com

http://www.EDS.com

http://www.WebMD.com

http://www.Pets.com

http://www.adcritic.com

Note: This is the 191st of a series of elementary articles designed for surfing the Internet. Next, Ebay Addict? Really? is the subject on tap. Stay Tuned. Until next week, happy travels through cyberspace. Previous issues of Internet Info for Real People can be found: http://www.thebee.com.

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