The Web and the Super Bowl Effect

Super Bowl viewers looked at the computer screen while watching the game. According to data released by Hitwise, SuperBowl-Ads.com experienced a 604 percent increase in visits on the big day; many of those visitors came to the site through CBS SportsLine.com.

Ad sites made way for advertiser sites. King Pharmaceuticals saw a 1,727 percent lift in market share on February 4 over the day before. Traffic went to the company’s beatyourrisk.com. Budweiser’s bud.tv went up 1,401 percent in market share; and Sales Genie saw a 534 percent increase.

Visits to AOL Sports.com increased by 78 percent, while CBS SportsLine increased by 12 percent over the same period.

Super Bowl Advertiser Web Sites by Visit Market Share Change, February 3-4, 2007
Advertiser/Product	Domain	Change in Market Share (%)
King Pharmaceuticals and the American Heart Association	www.beatyourisk.com	1,727
Budweiser	www.bud.tv	1,401
Sales Genie	www.salesgenie.com	534
Pepsi	www.pepsi.com	374
Snickers	www.snickers.com	234
Bud Light	www.budlight.com	195
Go Daddy	www.godaddy.com	74
Doritos	www.crashthesuperbowl.com	69
Van Heusen/Izod	www.pvh.com	66
Budweiser	www.budweiser.com	56
Garmin	www.garmin.com	44
MGM/”Hannibal Rising”	www.hannibalrising.com	35
Emerald Nuts	www.emeraldnuts.com	33
Taco Bell	www.tacobell.com	29
CareerBuilder	www.careerbuilder.com	25
Note: Data are based on daily visit market share (the percentage of traffic), comparing visits for February 3-4, 2007 from among the Hitwise sample of 10 million U.S. Internet users.
Source: Hitwise, 2007

During the game, Akamai‘s Net Usage Index for advertising noted an average 160,000 visitors per minute to advertiser Web sites during the game. Average traffic during the two to three weeks prior to the game were about 80,000 visits per minute.

A traffic spike occurred immediately before halftime, when 227,957 visitors per minute were registered. Of those visitors to advertiser sites, 210,893 represented U.S. Internet users. Traffic increased to 282,957 visitors per minute in the last 15 minutes of the game, and approached 300,000 visitors per minute the following morning.

Akamai’s Net Usage indices track online consumption for news, retail, music, and advertising categories.

Hitwise monitors how more than 25 million Internet users interact with over 500,000 Web sites across 160 industry categories. It collects Internet usage information through a combination of ISP data partnerships and opt-in panels. Data are collected in accordance with local and international privacy legislation and are audited by PricewaterhouseCoopers.