Victoria's Secret ran an ad during the Super Bowl that touted an online lingerie show featuring top super models. Though the show wasn't for three more days, the site experienced a huge spike in traffic immediately following the ad, which featured barely-clad models sashaying down the runway inviting viewers to visit the company's new Web site. The show itself drew as many as 1.5 million viewers.
There are "a lot of Internet companies looking to do broadcast advertising," said Tara Lemmey, a San Francisco advertising consultant. "Internet advertising is not working for them anymore; they can't get enough penetration."
Lemmey said she expects to see Internet companies sharply increase their broadcast advertising this year.
Make big noise
"Cyberbrands are going to continue to have to spend significant dollars in offline media to build a brand and stand above the crowd," agreed Drew Ianni, an analyst at Jupiter Research Inc. in New York.
Ianni said the Victoria's Secret ad was good for building traffic on the site, but it was different from the ads run by Monster.com and hotjobs.com, which were trying to create more brand awareness.
"Synthesizing advertising with commerce is what it's all about. We'll continue to see that," Ianni added.
At Victoria's Secret, the synthesis certainly worked.
"With the digital consumer, you've got someone already dialed up to the Internet while they're watching the game," said Anne Marie Blaire, senior manager of Internet brand development for Victoria's Secret parent company Intimate Brands Inc., explaining why people logged on even though the football game wasn't over.
Worked for job sites
The lingerie maker wasn't the only company to reap the benefits of a Super Bowl ad. Online job sites Monster.com and Hotjobs.com said they drove record traffic to their sites after the Super Bowl. Monster.com said that it had 2.2 million job searches between the Super Bowl and 24 hours later, more than four times as high as the 500,000 job searches it had processed in a similar time frame two weeks earlier. At Hotjobs.com said traffic rose five-fold immediately after its ad appeared.
And, while many observers wondered whether the cost of a Super Bowl ad was really worth it to a company like Hotjobs.com, which spent its entire annual budget on the ad, one observer was emphatically positive.
"Hotjobs wouldn't have gotten name recognition if they hadn't done that -- I'm sure they got their money's worth," said Mercedes Cardona, a reporter at Advertising Age magazine in New York and a judge for a Super Bowl advertising contest. "If you advertise on the Super Bowl, it signifies you're for real."
Lisa M. Bowman contributed to this story.
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