Super Bowl XXXIV (played in January 2000) featured 14 advertisements from 14 different dot-com companies, each of which paid an average of $2.2 million per spot.[1][2] In addition, five companies that were founded before the dot-com bubble also ran tech-related ads, and 2 before game ads, for a total of 21 different dot-com ads. These ads amounted to nearly 20% of the 61 spots available,[1] and $44 million in advertising. In addition to ads which ran during the game, several companies also purchased pre-game ads, most of which are lesser known. All of the publicly held companies which advertised saw their stocks slump after the game as the dot-com bubble began to rapidly deflate.[1]
The sheer amount of dot-com-related ads was so unusual that Super Bowl XXXIV has been widely referred to as the "Dot-Com Super Bowl"; it is often used as a high-water mark for the dot-com bubble.[3][4][5] Of these companies, four are still active, five were bought by other companies, and the remaining five are defunct or of unknown status.
Effectiveness
Many websites saw short-term gains from the advertisements. LastMinuteTravel.com, for example, reported a surge of 300,000 hits per minute during its advertisement broadcast. In many cases, though, this did not translate into long-term gains. OurBeginning.com's revenue jumped 350% in Q1 of 2000, but its $5 million in advertising costs were still ten times what its customers spent. Short-term gains were not enough to recoup advertising losses, and Pets.com, Computer.com, and Epidemic.com, among many others, would fold before the end of the year.
Later references
Less than a year later, E*Trade ran an ad during Super Bowl XXXV mocking the glut of dot-com commercials during the previous game. The ad featured the chimpanzee from E*Trade's 2000 commercial wandering through a ghost town filled with the remains of fictional dot-com companies, including a direct reference to the already-defunct Pets.com's sock puppet. During the game that year, only three dot-com companies ran advertisements.[6]
The dot-com commercials that aired during Super Bowl XXXIV received renewed attention in 2022 following Super Bowl LVI, which featured a large number of cryptocurrency-related ads. Critics drew comparisons between the rise of cryptocurrency and its commercials to the 2000 game's ads and the ensuing dot-com bubble burst,[7][8] and nicknamed the 2022 game the "Crypto Bowl".[9]
In-game ads
The following list details each company, the commercials they ran, and their ultimate fate. All spots were 30 seconds long.
Companies founded before the bubble
In addition to the companies listed above, several tech companies that were founded before the dot-com boom also ran ads. As these are outside the strict definition of a dot-com company, since their founding significantly pre-dated the creation of a dot-com website, they have been listed separately.
Pre-game ads
The following list details companies which ran ads prior to the actual game time.
See also
- Dot-com bubble
- Cryptocurrency bubble
External links
Contemporary opinions leading up to Super Bowl XXXIV
In-depth articles
References
- Pender, Kathleen. "Dot-Com Super Bowl Advertisers Fumble / But Down Under, LifeMinders.com may win at Olympics", San Francisco Chronicle, 13 September 2000. Accessed February 26 2014. Archived from the original on 1 February 2016.^
- Though Britannica.com, E*Trade, Electronic Data Systems, Kforce, and MicroStrategy are all companies that ran ads with a .com address, they have not been included in this list because the founding date of these companies exclude them from the strict definition of a dot-com company.