Dot-com commercials during Super Bowl XXXIV

Super Bowl XXXIV (played in January 2000) featured 14 advertisements from 14 different dot-com companies, each of which paid an average of $2.2 million per spot.[1][note 1] In addition, five companies that were founded before the dot-com bubble also ran tech-related ads, and 2 before game ads, for a total of 21 different dot-com ads. These ads amounted to nearly 20 percent of the 61 spots available,[1] and $44 million in advertising.[2] In addition to ads which ran during the game, several companies also purchased pre-game ads, most of which are lesser known. All of the publicly held companies which advertised saw their stocks slump after the game as the dot-com bubble began to rapidly deflate.[1]

The sheer amount of dot-com-related ads was so unusual that Super Bowl XXXIV has been widely been referred to as the "Dot-Com Super Bowl",[3] and it is often used as a high-water mark for the dot-com bubble.[4][5][6] Of these companies, four are still active, five were bought by other companies, and the remaining five are defunct or of unknown status.

Effectiveness

Many websites saw short-term gains from the advertisements. LastMinuteTravel.com, for example, reported a surge of 300,000 hits per minute during its advertisement broadcast.[7] In many cases, though, this did not translate into long-term gains. OurBeginning.com's revenue jumped 350% in Q1 of 2000, but its $5 million in advertising costs were still ten times what its customers spent.[8] Short-term gains were not enough to recoup advertising losses, and Pets.com, Computer.com, and Epidemic.com, among many others, would fold before the end of the year.

Later references

Less than a year later, E*Trade ran an ad during Super Bowl XXXV mocking the glut of dot-com commercials during the previous game. The ad featured the chimpanzee from E*Trade's 2000 commercial wandering through a ghost town filled with the remains of fictional dot-com companies, including a direct reference to the already-defunct Pets.com's sock puppet. During the game that year, only three dot-com companies ran advertisements.[2]

The dot-com commercials that aired during Super Bowl XXXIV received renewed attention in 2022 following Super Bowl LVI, which featured a large number of cryptocurrency-related ads. Critics drew comparisons between the rise of cryptocurrency and its commercials to the 2000 game's ads and the ensuing dot-com bubble burst,[9][10] and nicknamed the 2022 game the "Crypto Bowl".[11][12] Following a similar crash in cryptocurrencies, as well as major cryptocurrency exchange FTX filing for bankruptcy in November 2022, it and multiple other cryptocurrency-related companies that had bought ad space for the following Super Bowl (Super Bowl LVII) pulled out, resulting in no cryptocurrency-related ads airing that year.[13]

In-game ads

The following list details each company, the commercials they ran, and their ultimate fate. All spots were 30 seconds long.

Company Commercial Title(s) Company Status
AutoTrader.com[14] "I Need a Car" Active
Computer.com[5] "Mike and Mike"[3] Purchased by Office Depot in 2000[3]
e1040.com "Charity" Defunct; parent company Gilman Ciocia merged with National Holdings Corporation in 2013[15]
Epidemic.com[1] "Bathroom" Defunct in 2000
E-Stamp.com "Time Saving Tips" Defunct; domain name redirects to Stamps.com
HotJobs.com[1] "Negotiations" Bought by Yahoo! in 2002, later purchased and liquidated by Monster.com in 2010
LastMinuteTravel.com[7] "Tornado" Active; merged with Tourico Holidays in 2004,[16] which itself was acquired by Hotelbeds Group in 2017[17]
LifeMinders.com[1] "The Worst Commercial" Purchased by Cross Media Group in 2001[18]
Monster.com[1] "The Road Less Travelled" Active; acquired by Randstad NV in 2016
OnMoney.com[19] "Paper Monster" Defunct in 2002
Netpliance[1] "Webhead" Rebranded as TippingPoint in 2002, purchased by 3Com in 2005
OurBeginning.com[8][20] "Invites" Purchased by an undisclosed company in 2002
Pets.com[1] "If You Leave Me Now" Defunct in 2000, Liquidated in 2001; redirects to PetSmart's website
WebMD[1] "Ali" Active; acquired by Internet Brands in 2017

Companies founded before the bubble

In addition to the companies listed above, several tech companies that were founded before the dot-com boom also ran ads. As these are outside the strict definition of a dot-com company, since their founding significantly pre-dated the creation of a dot-com website, they have been listed separately.

Company Commercial Title(s) Spot Length Company Status
Britannica Active (online only; print edition ceased publication in 2010)
E*Trade[1] "Wasted 2 Million", "Out the Wazoo", "Basketball Prodigy" 0:30 each Active (acquired by Morgan Stanley in 2020)
Electronic Data Systems "Cat herders" Purchased by HP in 2008[21]
Kforce Active
MicroStrategy[1] "Fraud", "Stock Alert" 0:30 each Active

Pre-game ads

The following list details companies which ran ads prior to the actual game time.

Company Commercial Title(s) Spot Length Company Status
Computer.com "Untitled 1", "Untitled 2"[3] 0:30 each Purchased by Office Depot in 2000[3]
OurBeginning.com "Untitled 1", "Untitled 2", "Untitled 3" 0:30 each Purchased by an undisclosed company in 2002

Notes
  1. Though Britannica.com, E*Trade, Electronic Data Systems, Kforce, and MicroStrategy are all companies that ran ads with a .com address, they have not been included in this list because the founding date of these companies exclude them from the strict definition of a dot-com company. Sources do not agree on the exact amount of dot-com advertisers who bought spots.

See also

References
  1. Pender, Kathleen. "Dot-Com Super Bowl Advertisers Fumble / But Down Under, LifeMinders.com may win at Olympics", San Francisco Chronicle, 13 September 2000. Accessed February 26 2014. Archived from the original on 1 February 2016.
  2. Hyman, Mark, and Tom Lowry. "What's Missing from Super Bowl XXXV?", Bloomberg Businessweek, 7 January 2001. Accessed February 28 2014.
  3. Shroeder, Charlie. "The Dot-Com Super Bowl", Weekend America, 2 February 2008. Accessed February 26 2014. Archived from the original on 3 February 2016.
  4. Bennet, Dashiell. 8 Dot-Coms That Spent Millions On Super Bowl Ads And No Longer Exist", Business Insider, 2 February 2011. Accessed February 26 2014. Archived from the original on 27 June 2015.
  5. Basich, Zoran. "Super Bowl Lures HomeAway, 10 Years After Dot-Com Debacle", The Wall Street Journal Blogs, 19 January 2010. Accessed February 26 2014. Archived from the original on 1 January 2016.
  6. Planes, Alex. "The Biggest Waste of Money in Super Bowl History", Motley Fool, 30 January 2013. Accessed February 28, 2014. Archived from the original on 6 March 2014.
  7. ""Super Bowl's Last Minute and LastMinuteTravel.com's Last-Minute Commercial Are Big Winners", HospitalityNet, 31 January 2000. Accessed February 28, 2014. Archived from the original on 5 March 2014.
  8. "OurBeginning.com's marketing bomb", Venture Navigator, August 2007. Accessed February 28, 2014. Archived from the original on 13 July 2014.
  9. Tellez, Anthony (February 14, 2022). "Crypto ads are a Super Bowl talker, with floating QR codes and Larry David". NPR. Retrieved February 14, 2022.
  10. Faughnder, Ryan (February 14, 2022). "Et tu, Larry? Why so many celebrities are shilling for crypto". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved February 14, 2022.
  11. Hsu, Tiffany (February 11, 2022). "Prepare Yourself for This Weekend's 'Crypto Bowl'". The New York Times. Retrieved February 14, 2022.
  12. Mellor, Sophie (February 14, 2022). "Crypto companies spent millions on Super Bowl ads. So did Pets.com". Fortune. Retrieved February 14, 2022.
  13. Ourand, John (6 February 2023). "Fox Sports sells out Super Bowl ad time". Sports Business Journal. Retrieved 2023-02-11.
  14. Gelsi, Steve. "Tiny Dot-com Joins Super Bowl", CBS News, 24 January 2000. Accessed February 26 2014. Archived from the original on 3 March 2014.
  15. "Gilman Ciocia merged with National Holdings Corporation". June 2013.
  16. "Last Minute Travel".
  17. "Hotelbeds Group completes deal for Tourico Holidays". 8 June 2017.
  18. "LifeMinders Sold", Emailuniverse.com, 19 July 2001. Accessed February 28, 2014.
  19. White, Erin. "Start-Up OnMoney.com Bets It All On 30-Second Ad During Super Bowl", The Wall Street Journal, 2 February 2000. Accessed February 28, 2014. Archived from the original on 5 March 2014.
  20. Chartier, John. "Dot.coms ready Bowl game", CNN Money, 28 January 2000. Accessed February 26 2014. Archived from the original on 3 March 2014.
  21. "HP to Acquire EDS for $13.9 Billion". HP News. Archived from the original on 2 March 2013. Retrieved 13 February 2015.

Contemporary opinions leading up to Super Bowl XXXIV

In-depth articles
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