GoDaddy is quickly becoming famous for its provocative, sexual ads displayed on the Super Bowl each year. This is GoDaddy’s fifth consecutive year in the Super Bowl, and according to many sources, the millions of dollars spent, is well paying off.
According to an article by Ad Age, Godaddy’s estimated value from the publicity of the 2008 commercial (that was never aired) was $11.7 million. In fact the CEO, Bob Parsons, says “The day before we ran our first ad in 2005, our market share of new-domain registrations was 16%”. The week after the first Super Bowl ad, it increased to 25%. He states that “the next year, it moved from 25% to 32%. We had a nice bump every game. Right now, we are at 46% worldwide”. A lot of this traffic is probably generated due to GoDaddy’s call to action at the end of their commercials which invites viewers to view the full “uncensored” ad online at www.godaddy.com.
Also, this chart shows that users are actively searching online for the commercials, even after the game is over. Clearly, GoDaddy is doing a good job when it comes to generating buzz and brand awareness.
But it still leaves me to ask one question – Aren’t most domain-buyers business owners? Wouldn’t they find these ads offensive or unprofessional?
Well, personally, I think the ads turn me off to the brand and I find them a little disgusting – but that really doesn’t matter because I clearly don’t fit into their target audience. Most would agree that the ad is targeted to young, male adults, even though according to this article, 2 out of 3 women who went to GoDaddy’s website “loved” the ad. However, I think the numbers are slightly irrelevant since the survey was taken on GoDaddy’s website, and clearly anyone who took the trouble to go to their website to watch the ad there, obviously had some interest in the commercial.
Although GoDaddy seems to do a good job at gaining interest immediately after the Super Bowl it seems like they need to work on keeping it after the game-talk dies down. According to Google Trends, there is always a huge spike in activity for the brand at the beginning of the year near the time of the Super Bowl, however, it quickly fades away for the remaining months.
Also, I find that GoDaddy’s ad is becoming slightly repetitive. Every year you have a hot girl, taking her shirt off and something with a court room, and an old man being unable to breathe. It seems to still have an effect, but every good thing comes to an end, and soon their viewers are bound to become bored with the same concept and desire something new. According to a survey done by Ad Age, 85% of viewers said that they are sick of seeing the same ads over and over. In the article, someone commented that “anything that irritates the consumer in today’s environment increased control over media is exacerbating the likelihood commercials will be skipped entirely”.
This leads me to my conclusion, that the question isn’t whether or not the ads are working – they clearly are. The real question is how much longer can GoDaddy keep up this pattern of increased-business year after year because of the Super Bowl? I guess we’ll just have to wait and see….
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