How to Watch the Super Bowl Ads - follow-up

Today's Advertising Age e-newsletter featured an article titled, "Yes, the Super Bowl is Well Worth $3M a Spot." AdAge is not without its biases, but to their credit, they cite some specific data in support of their case. Registration may be required to view the article, so I've excerpted some highlights below:

In the 2008 Super Bowl, Hyundai purchased 2 third-quarter spots to promote the launch of its new luxury car, the Genesis. They recorded 300,000 visits to their branded website during the game, and their VP-Marketing notes that they were able to begin a relationship and close sales with many of these visitors. (I can't recall what that ad looked like, can you? Credit Hyundai for focusing on behavioral change, not just the memorability of the ad.)

GoDaddy founder and CEO Bob Parsons largely credits the Super Bowl for moving GoDaddy's global share of new domain registration from 16% to 46% in the last 3 years. They closely track site visitors before and after the ads run. They've also benefited from PR surrounding their racy spots.

E-Trade notes that its "talking baby" spot (still running a year later) resulted in a 32% growth rate in newly opened and funded accounts in the week following the game.

Notably, the article includes not a word on the opposing point of view - those advertisers for whom the Super Bowl investment did not pay out (dot-coms, anyone?). So the title of the article is unfortunate, and probably wholly incorrect.

But the emphasis on measurement is spot-on. As brand stewards, we have to ask not only if we're seeing any return on our investments, but whether we're seeing the best return among all possible options. Web traffic, favorable consumer surveys, ad views on YouTube - all of these are worthless unless they create a meaningful business result. If everyone at the water cooler is buzzing about your talking baby ad, but nobody's buying, your ad has failed and that baby should be fired.

Again, the purpose of advertising is to motivate, not to entertain. To the extent that we remember this, we'll all make much better use of our budgets and investments.