Comments for The Real Winner of the Super Bowl? Dennys.com

The Real Winner of the Super Bowl? Dennys.com

2009-02-06T18:13:10Z

This year's Super Bowl didn't feature a lot of outstanding ads, but according to the latest data from Compete, quite a few advertisers were able to get a sizable share of the audience to head over to their websites on game day. The charge was led by Denny's, which used its ads to offer a free breakfast to all Americans. Denny's saw its traffic grow by almost 1700% on the day of the Super Bowl. For Etrade, on the other hand, the Super Bowl was a bust. Its traffic dropped by 57%.

]]> While no other advertiser came close to Denny's success, both Frio-Lay, with its ads for Cheetos (+313%), and PepsiCo, which actively promoted refresheverything.com (+199%) and gatorade.com (+143%), were able to attract a good number of TV viewers to their websites.

Interestingly, the ads for online video service Hulu.com only drove an additional 76% to the site. Other online services, like TeleFlora.com and the somewhat disreputable Cash4Gold.com only saw a modest increase of 65% and 50%.

Career websites like Monster.com and CarrerBuilder.com actually saw their traffic decline by 16% and 17%. Cars.com's reach dropped by 22%, and Etrade, even though it had relatively funny ads, saw its traffic decline by a whopping 57%. These ads clearly only spoke to a small slice of the audience, though it would be interesting to see if and how their traffic recovered in the days following the Super Bowl.

Compete, together win TNS Media, also tracked the traditional and social media buzz around the ads in the days following the Super Bowl. Interestingly, interest in the ads dropped to almost zero within the first two days after the game.

Comment from David Russell on 2009-02-06

2009-02-06T19:53:51Z

Could the Denny's number be significant because no one visits dennys.com on a regular day? A site like hulu.com, on the other hand, is well-trafficked which seems to make that 76% increase actually quite significant.

Could the E*Trade numbers be a result of the fact that there is less trading on Sundays, especially during the Super Bowl? If the numbers compare to the "average the week before", I'd expect a significant drop on the weekend for a site like E*Trade. What about the Sunday before? Regardless of this, it's obvious a 57% drop is noteworthy given the nature of the advertising in play. But I'm not sure these numbers accurately reflect the actual success or failure these campaigns will cause the companies listed.

Dennys.com may be a winner, but is Denny's?

Comment from plin on 2009-02-06

2009-02-06T22:02:08Z

It really depends on how winner is defined. Denny's spend 3 million on the ad and give out numerous free breakfast, but at the end of the day, how much extra revenue is generated? I would love to see sales number for those companies that spend that kind of advertisement dollars for Super Bowl ads.

Comment from pwb on 2009-02-06

2009-02-06T22:07:16Z

C'mon. You gotta put a little more effort into the analysis. Etrade is a *STOCK TRADING* service that has very massive traffic during market hours and hardly any on Sunday afternoon. Don't confuse the branding companies with the functional ones. Is there really any reason to *ever* visit dennys.com, pepsi.com or bud.com?

Comment from pwb on 2009-02-06

2009-02-06T22:08:18Z

Further, percentages can be meaningless in an exercise like this.

Comment from brugte traktorer on 2009-02-06

2009-02-06T23:41:47Z

who said offline marketing did'nt work ? :-)

Comment from adverlicious on 2009-02-06

2009-02-07T02:47:21Z

Denny's Super Bowl "free breakfast" commercial surely drove the majority of their website's traffic boost, but they did supplement it with a decent amount of online advertising.

For the curious, I've archived an example in my collection of online ads:

http://adverlicio.us/dennys_real_breakfast_back_300x250

(I've also archived the online Super Bowl XLIII ads from Disney Parks and Monster ... more to come as they're passed along to me)

Comment from söve on 2009-02-07

2009-02-07T08:20:41Z

thanks.

Comment from Ebaby on 2009-02-07

2009-02-07T09:37:50Z

Be nice to the Etrade babies!

These statistics by Compete have zero relative meaning and are useless for many industries.

1. On a Superbowl night, how many people do you think are inclined to care about a financial portfolio and go to an online brokerage site? In an economy like this, such occasions especially act as getaways from worrying about assets & stocks.

2. The people more likely to visit sites on a 'holiday' are probably generally younger and less concerned with investing/trading.

What actually matters is measuring how well a brand becomes known and comes to mind when the moment *is* right: sales and sign-ups.

Comment from N. James Briggs on 2009-02-07

2009-02-08T02:10:51Z

Where is the analysis? Of course Etrade is down on a Sunday...and web traffic across the board was probably lower because 150M people were watching the game.

This post is a rare exception to the generally astute and cogent arguments usually presented by RRW.

Comment from TIMOTHY on 2009-06-18

2009-06-19T06:21:47Z

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It can send the fresh flowers quickly to your girlfirend after you place an order.They provide many kinds of flowers in season.You can go to their site to take a look and choose what you like.

Comment from matt on 2009-09-04

2009-09-04T12:22:51Z

Cash4gold's add was pretty awesome! check out what they are doing for Cali:
http://news.prnewswire.com/ViewContent.aspx?ACCT=109&STORY=/www/story/09-03-2009/0005088259&EDATE=
http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/cash4gold-provides-cash-for-the,948814.shtml