Super Bowl Ads Spur Traffic Gains

Those dot-coms that anted up the $2.2 million plus per Super Bowl spot are reaping increased traffic in the aftermath of the highly-rated game.

The companies that got the most significant boosts were those with little traffic to start, according to a report by PC Data Online, which monitored unique visitors to advertiser sites before and after the game.

Computer.com, which just launched its site on Super Bowl Sunday, saw a 2,502 percent increase in traffic, according to the report.

That’s good news for Computer.com, since it spent over $3 million of its $5.8 million seed round funding to purchase, develop and create the ad spots. The ads featured faux home movies featuring the founders and characters portraying family members, friends, and investors.

Other sites that started out with low traffic saw big percentage jumps. Microstrategy.com enjoyed a 2,350 percent increase, and Netpliance.com boosted its traffic 967 percent.

But even more established players saw traffic grow significantly after the game, according to numbers from PC Data.

Britannica.com saw the biggest increase, at 541 percent, according to the report.

In the hotly-contested jobs category, in which three advertisers made Super Bowl appearances, Monster.com attracted the most unique visitors post-game, at 249,939.

But the company had a head start, so this number represented only an 80 percent increase. Rival HotJobs.com attracted 210 percent more traffic after the game, with 130,599 unique users.

“Our sustained traffic was at least three times higher than any other day we have had in our history. The ad worked for us,” says Richard Johnson, president and chief executive officer of HotJobs.com. The company’s own figures give it an estimated 2.6 million pageviews on Sunday.

The also-ran player in the jobs battle, kforce.com, saw a 76 percent increase in unique visitors after its ad appeared.

WebMD‘s eerie ad showing Mohammed Ali silently shadowboxing the camera boosted its traffic to high numbers, but a smaller percentage increase than others saw. The site received an 18 percent increase in traffic, with 233,838 unique visitors.

Surprisingly, E*Trade, which sponsored the most ads during the game, got only a 15 percent spike in visitors to its site, at 139,247.

Other sites registering traffic gains were AutoTrader.com (110 percent) and OurBeginnings.com (82 percent).

Although PC Data didn’t measure traffic to another dot-com newcomer, Epidemic.com, the company says traffic and new registrations on the site have increased somewhere around a hundred percent since its spot aired.

“The Super Bowl is a fantastic forum for us,” says Kelly Wanser, president and chief executive officer of Epidemic.com. “We are very pleased with the results. It has really kind of catapulted us.”

Surprisingly, Pets.com, with its popular hand puppet ads, saw a 5 percent decrease in traffic; and LifeMinders.com saw a 13 percent dip, according to the PC Data figures, although it still drew in substantial numbers (226,757 unique visitors).