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(WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) -- For its fifth consecutive year advertising during the NFL championship, hosting provider Go Daddy (www.godaddy.com) has gone with a familiar format of amusement and titillation that has once again garnered attention and new clients due to its Super Bowl ad campaign (videos.godaddy.com).
Two out of three women "loved" the racy ad featuring IndyCar driver Danica Patrick, according to Go Daddy's survey of those who watched the the broadcast and online versions of the Super Bowl ad. Seven out of ten men responded likewise.
Go Daddy CEO and Founder Bob Parsons said this year's sales statistics are proof that GoDaddy's over-the-top commercials worked well, especially in light of the current economic climate. "This Super Bowl ad campaign turned out to be right on the money for us; in fact, I'd say it's our best work," Parsons said in a statement following the game. "Not only did customers say they liked the ads, more importantly, many voted with their wallets when they signed up as new customers or placed new orders."
Following a record sales year, Go Daddy's 2009 Super Bowl campaign results shattered prior records for both new customer sign-ups and total orders, with 10 percent more new customers joining than last year's Super Bowl Sunday. "We've had consistent market share growth with our Super Bowl ads over the years, but what's different this time is how quickly we converted the new customers," Parsons said. "Before the game ended we began seeing sales surge."
As a last minute deal, Go Daddy purchased the final NBC commercial late Friday, gambling on a very risky slot after the final two-minute warning. Go Daddy notes that had it not been a close contest, as many had predicted, fewer viewers would have been watching, however, Arizona's comeback just prior to the two-minute mark sparked attention.
Much of Go Daddy's success can be attributed to its censor-aggravating commercials, which began in 2005 when its Super Bowl ad was censored by the network after running just once. It was a parody of the Janet Jackson's "wardrobe malfunction," featuring a scantily-clad "Go Daddy Girl" testifying before a congressional hearing.
Go Daddy's market share basically shot up overnight from 16 percent before the commercial controversy to 25 percent. Since that incident, Go Daddy has been following the same technique with great results. The next year's campaign boosted market share up to 32 percent. Continuing to gain marketshare, Go Daddy has since enlisted the help of Danica Patrick, 2008's Most Searched Athlete on the Internet, as a "Go Daddy Girl" in its edgy ad campaigns.
Read Back Issues of WHIR Magazine
October 2009 - Web Hosting's All Star Team
This has been, for us, one of the most interesting, exciting and challenging build-ups to an issue of the magazine yet, Web Hosting's All Star Team. The balloting process was our first experiment with a kind of user participation we're planning to do a lot more with in the months to come. We had thousands of ballots submitted, with hundreds of write-in suggestions and a demonstration of user engagement that has us feeling super positive about the project.
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July 2009 - What am I Worth?
One of the interesting luxuries of working on a project like the printed WHIR magazine is that it allows us to play with things like our point of view from one issue to the next. In recent months we've been giving added attention to the kind of practical and applicable advice aimed at smaller hosts and resellers. This issue carries on with that point of view, asking, in our cover story, "what am I worth?" It's a complicated question without a clear-cut answer.
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May 2009 - The Blueprint for a Small Web Host
I was a little surprised by how difficult it became to see this idea through. We set out to assemble a blueprint for a small hosting business, but butted up pretty quickly against the general impossibility of covering all the territory that was out there to be covered. The basic constraints of a printed magazine, and the less-than-infinite amount of time we had available forced us to face the fact that we could never produce an exhaustive guide to starting a hosting company.
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