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DNN received several reports during the Super Bowl that Godaddy had removed Premium Listings from being displayed.  Elliot’s Blog made mention of this possibility and today we received confirmation from Paul Nicks, Director of Godaddy Aftermarket, that the company did indeed pull Premium Listings during the Super Bowl.

Nicks confirmed that the listings were removed but were quickly put back in to play . He assured DNN that the Premium channel would benefit from much of the post-game marketing blitz that Godaddy is conducting even still.

Nicks told DNN

“It is true that for a small portion of time around the airing of the two commercials, the Premium Listing service was static. GoDaddy.com optimizes the site to handle the crush of web traffic coming to us for Super Bowl ads. People were visiting the site to see the Super Bowl commercials and that’s what we provided, a secure, safe and solid website.”

Godaddy has been making strides to become a player in the domain aftermarket and the chance to benefit from the traffic from a Super Bowl ad obviously would be very appealing to anyone selling in the aftermarket.  Godaddy even issued a statement on January 31st touting the Super Bowl ad timing as a great time for customers to “leverage the Super Bowl Glow” to sell through the Premium Listings.  While one would have assumed the best time to benefit would have been during the ad rush, it looks like Godaddy considers the timing before and after the Super Bowl ads to be the “Super Bowl Glow”.

Nicks continues,  ”An exciting element to consider, one we did not tout in our news release, is the amount of publicity that would drive visitors and potential customers to our website in the days preceding the game. Go Daddy clips and commercials were shown on network news programs, syndicated entertainment programs and discussed in major print and online publications, starting January 31st.  Many highlighted Go Daddy’s successful strategies and history with driving traffic to the website. This helped our Premium Listing customers in ways we did not predict.”

“We are exceeding our own expectations for web traffic today, following the game and our Premium Listing service is certainly benefiting from increased exposure. Last night’s commercials are generating a tremendous amount of publicity today, as critics discuss the ads. We are also executing a  major media tour in New York City right now with our new GoDaddy.CO Girl, Joan Rivers. We expect her talking about domain names in the mainstream media will help sustain interest beyond this morning.”

(c) 2011 DomainNameNews.com (4)

Now that the Super Bowl game’s “Brand Bowl” is finished, the polls and opinions are popping up everywhere. This year there seems to be a lot more  reactions and buzz bubbling on the internet, more so than in year’s past, thanks in part to social media sites.

Who had the cleverest ads? Who was the funniest?  Facebook, Youtube and Twitter (and maybe even a few old-school water coolers) will be buzzing the rest of today with chatter about both an amazing game and some good and some not so good ads.  Youtube’s voting is still going on and you can catch all the ads that you missed. There were some good ones that got a little chuckle from me, but generally speaking the creative wasn’t outstanding. The companies that advertised on the game and matter most in this little “domain world” were Google and Godaddy. . .

On Twitter a lot of people seemed to like the Google ad but like Jeff Jarvis in this article, I wasn’t really super impressed. It was a clever use of story to demonstrate the product and was classically simple, but really does something so simple as using Google need to be demonstrated?  Jarvis makes a point about France and Football not being a great matchup. It could have been more audience targeted, but CEO Eric Schmidt admitted that the ad wasn’t created for specifically for the Big Game.  Also, doesn’t Google already TOTALLY dominate search ?  I get that it’s a great branding opportunity and the ad endeared many to the brand, but Google has a lot of other offerings to showoff to that the average guy on the couch may not have a clue about.  Did they just release a phone or something ?

Overall, Google winning the love of most viewers is okay by me and it’s surreal to think that what some are calling the #1 advertisement is for a “new media” brand that has chipped away the base of “traditional media” revenues and completely changed the advertising landscape.  To me, Google’s ad running on the Super Bowl gives the idea of Super Bowl advertising more legitimacy.

Most disappointing to me (and to several others) was the Godaddy commercials.  Ok, we get it Godaddy. You like to have controversy and you like to have your ads pulled so you can get more PR before the game, but really come on. It’s done.   It used to be impressive to me that a domain company had the money and guts to invest in expensive Super Bowl ads, but I’m over it.  Godaddy released several ads this year. One ad got cut and two that didn’t get cut made it on air during the game (one posted below).  Personally, I would have preferred the cut ad. It does a better job explaining the product and isn’t all about popping open shirts.

While I sat in my comfy chair watching the game and surfing on my phone, my twitter stream filled with negative reactions to Godaddy ads, but suddenly Bob Parson’s chimes in with a “72% surveyed say GoDaddy.com #sb44 ads were hilarious.” tweet. What !?  Who are these people taking this survey? Even the 4 person team on twitter @godaddyguy even chimed in saying they were having a hard time keeping up. This is where you earn your keep I guess guys.

Back to the ads.  The premise for these ads is basically pretend to show some boobies at the end and leave them hanging with ” See More at GoDaddy.com” . . .and I’m sure MANY went hoping to see more.  Like one blogger points out “Not only do these cliffhanger endings generate buzz and capture the audience’s attention, it also gets people to actually visit GoDaddy.com to see what its all about.”  Only problem is, like crying wolf, you can only pull this “trick” once.  The viewer doesn’t get anything special when they go to the site.

You got the viewer to your site with the same “1 horse trick”.  Now what?  The viewer thinks “I went to the site and I didn’t get what I wanted”.  They now remember you and your brand as being a company that teases them into thinking they were getting a “free porn show” . . . oh and maybe remembers you sell domain names.  As Brian Clark from Copyblogger.com said, “Thanks GoDaddy, but your target audience already knows where the best porn on the web is“.

Fear not though, Godaddy is ready to give you the chance to show them how to do it better.  In a similar fashion to other brands before them, Godaddy is holding a contest and awarding prizes for the best ads.  Hopefully they have judges that aren’t  the same 72% that voted in the previously mentioned poll.

If anyone has a camera, a ski boat and a pet shark, I’ve got a good idea for a commercial :)

(c) 2009 DomainNameNews.com

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