This story appeared in the January/February 2004 issue of Web Host Industry Review magazine. Click here to subscribe for free.
February 7, 2005 — (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — From pre-game tailgate parties to post-game rioting, the Super Bowl is one of the biggest super-sized attractions in a country that knows how to do spectacle. This is much more than just moving a ball over a line. In fact, calling this event “a game” is a bit like calling the Pope a religious minded individual.
Even the commercials are big. A survey of 500 Americans conducted by market research firm Insight Express in front of last year’s game found that over half of all Americans make plans to watch the event. And among those who watch, 58 percent say they pay more attention to the ads during the game than to advertising at any other time of the year which makes the Super Bowl a major event in the advertising industry as well.
It’s hard to stand out in the media space these days, pervasive as it is (do we really need ads on parking lot gates?). But the all-encompassing nature of advertising goes some way toward explaining why the price of an ad in this year’s game ? broadcast on Rupert Murdoch’s Fox Network ? is up 6 percent to $2.4 million per spot. But advertisers will pay because they know it’s the one time of the year they can get the attention of a group this large all at once ? maybe the only time people are actually watching to see the ads. And that means advertisers will go all out again this year to script and shoot 30-second spots of epic proportions.
One of the most ambitious Super Bowl ads was the Apple spot years back that drew high-minded literary inspiration from George Orwell’s book 1984. Since then there have been countless others ? that “fetch dog” ad last year was replayed time and again ? that have become firmly ensconced in the American psyche. But getting a hand on the success or failure of these one-shot works of art is the domain of New Mexico-based ad firm McKee Wallwork Henderson (growingfast.com), which has annually managed a Web site called Adbowl (adbowl.com) that creates an online competition to rival the game on the field by allowing viewers to vote for their favorite ads that appear during the broadcast.
Surfers who steer their browsers to the site are asked to rate each ad according to a simple scale from one to five, indicating a touchdown, field goal, first down, punt and fumble respectively. The winners are totaled in real time so that there’s a score available by the end of the game and anyone who stops by can find out what America thought of the ads shortly after the game ends.
The results are also divided into demographic categories, including age, sex and political affiliation, which revealed that, unlike their respective opinions about who should be president, both Democrats and Republicans were fairly close in which ads they liked. Nevertheless, it’s a marvelously simple example of real interactivity among the entire population and the site has become a fixture of the Super Bowl ? like the ads themselves ? since its launch in 2001. In that kickoff year the site registered just a couple thousand hits, likely a lot of advertising people. Those in the industry are always looking for a way to find out whether their commercials are being well received and when MWH decided to marry the Web with an internal idea ? an informal internal poll among employees ? Adbowl was born.
Since that time the site has grown into a general cultural phenomenon, and the traffic has doubled each year, with the site registering some six million hits in 2003. Of course that’s all in the space of a few hours, and that makes it a massively popular “one-time, one-day” destination.
As a result, Web host FatCow was brought in to handle the job last year. “We had such an overwhelming response this year that we had to cut off the voting process early due to an overload of people logging on,” James Korenchen, managing director of public relations for the advertising firm, was quoted as saying about the traffic during last year’s game.
There was also a cell phone element added by a Washington-based tech firm named Proteus, which remotely loads the Adbowl Web site into the browser of a phone so that the user is notified when to vote and can do so using that phone’s keypad. At the time, Craig Dalton, director of business development for Proteus, called the project “the first large-scale commercial implementation of the wireless application protocol push technology in the US.”
In fact, the site became so popular that Steve McKee, president of MWH, considered selling last year and shopped it around to companies like America Online, Home Depot, Coors and NetZero. That plan didn’t quite work out and MWH will again operate the site this year.
“Adbowl is happening,” says McKee over the phone from New Mexico. At press time, McKee was still in negotiations with a firm that would see a new distribution method for Adbowl, but he couldn’t say what that was or with whom. “We’re not sure yet what way it’s going to go. If we don’t come to an agreement we’ll go with FatCow again this year.”
He expects good traffic again as in years past, though it may not rocket past previous numbers since the company hasn’t engaged in the same intense PR campaign as it has in the past.
Nevertheless, he expects millions of hits. “Adbowl has its fans. It’s a cult brand to certain people,” says McKee. “There are lots from the ad industry and younger people who spend a lot of time online.”
So what might we expect in terms of content in the ads this year? “My guess is that people will be more circumspect with respect to offensive material. They’re going to be asking the question, ?Is this offensive?’ in ways that they may not have before,” says Mckee, alluding to Janet Jackson’s infamous halftime performance last year. “But the content will be fun. We’re three years out from 9/11 and the election is over. Everyone is glad about that. I think the zeitgeist is that people are looking for a good time.”
The winner in last year’s bowl was a Budweiser spot called “Donkey Dreams”. Will Bud clinch first place again? It certainly seems to have the best chance. The company has already snapped up ten of the 58 available places. But the decision will have to wait until America casts its vote.
ADBOWL.com goes live one-hour before kickoff and fans can begin voting as soon as the first commercial airs.
