Guest blogger: BOB PARSONS

• Bob Parsons is founder and CEO of GoDaddy.com.

Monday, February 5, 2007,
6:39 p.m.
   I have two comments to make. One involves the difference in traffic patterns most advertisers will see and why I think that is. The second deals with the network promo ads CBS cluttered throughout the Super Bowl.

Traffic was down. Sales were up! How can that be?
   This year, after our commercial aired, we first thought our ad was a “swing and a miss.” In fact, traffic at the Go Daddy site was down sharply (48%) when compared to last year.
   Then, to our complete surprise, something amazing happened. New customers and sales at the Go Daddy Web site exploded.
   As of 2 p.m. Monday, new customers for the day are up 66% and revenues up 43% - compared to normal business this time of year.
   Last year at this time, the increase was 61% for new customers and 20% for revenue.
   As GoDaddy.com is a much larger company this year than it was last year, the increases represent much more significant numbers. The increase in customers this year for “Super Bowl Monday” is 25% greater than what we experienced last year, and the increase in revenue is 56% greater than last year.
   At first this anomaly had us scratching our heads. How could sales and new customers be up so drastically, while visitors to the site are down so sharply? Then we figured it out – at least we think we did.
   With the advent of online video, most of those who simply wanted to see our ads went to familiar sites like iFilm.com and break.com. Those with a serious interest in GoDaddy.com came to our Web site. After thinking about it: That’s just fine with us.

The “Junk Ad” bowl
   CBS ran so many network promos on this year’s Super Bowl that the $2.6 million dollar ads they peddled, tended to come across as “not so special.”
   It seemed like every time I looked up there were groups of promos for CBS News, CSI, The Pro Bowl, Criminal Minds and on and on. It didn’t seem like the Super Bowl. It seemed more like late-night TV. In fact, I half expected to see an infomercial pop up at anytime.
   This cluttering of premium air time with cheap network promos definitely took some of the shine off what should have been the advertising event of the year. 

February 4, 2007 | Permalink