2010 is the 25th anniversary of the .com domain and dotcom companies appear to be back in rude health, judging by their domination of Super Bowl ads this year.
Google’s Super Bowl debut on Sunday night, with Parisian Love, was a low-budget affair. It was a rerun of an ad it has been showing online for months on YouTube.
“We liked this video so much…that we decided to share it with a wider audience,” explained Eric Schmidt, chief executive, in a blog post.
With the CBS network charging $2.5m – $3m for a 30-second spot, sharing the Parisian love with a national TV audience did not come cheap.
However, with the best ratings for a Super Bowl since 1987 and around half of US households watching the game, according to CBS, Google may consider it money well spent.
Google was also judged the second most effective after Doritos in promoting its brand during the Super Bowl, according to a survey carried out using Twitter at BrandBowl2010.
Dotcoms edged out car makers and beer as the leading Super Bowl ad category, according to Kantar Media.
Google and HomeAway were the two dotcom newcomers, joining Careerbuilder, Cars, E-Trade, GoDaddy, Monster and Teleflora, who all advertised last year.
The total of eight is still only half the 16 promoting websites out of the 33 advertisers at Super Bowl XXXIV ten years ago, at the height of the dotcom boom.
Superbowl XLIV also featured some big-budget ads promoting new technology.
Intel returned to the Super Bowl after a break of 12 years with two ads promoting its new Core processors.
Qualcomm bought two spots for its FLOtv personal television, while Vizio had a high-tech ad featuring Beyonce for its TVs with Internet Apps. Megan Fox in a bubble bath plugged the new Motorola Devour Android phone.
Critics gave the tech ads the highest scores:
“The best, as usual, were the new tech commercials – this time especially for FloTV’s thumbnail history and Vizio,” said Paul Levinson, Fordham University professor and media expert.
“They introduced the viewers to brand new media, and could ignite small revolutions in communication. But Google’s commercial was dull, and GoDaddy’s was no great shakes, certainly not as good as the raunchier GoDaddy commercials of previous years.”
