Search Marketing Scorecard
Super Bowl 2008: The Winning Brands
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Written By Sepideh Saremi | February 5, 2008 | Share This
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Yesterday we released the Reprise Media 2008 Super Bowl Search Marketing Scorecard, our annual look at the big game’s advertisers, and we outlined here the top-line Scorecard takeaways. Today we’ll take a closer look at the top three winning advertisers, with a review of what they did to effectively integrate search into their TV strategy.
We examined four categories of criteria this year: the actual TV ad, paid search, landing pages, and social media presence. (I should note here that social media was a new addition, and I’ll go into further detail in another post about this soon.) An advertiser’s integration of these four elements determined the Scorecard rankings, and we gave props to consistent cross-channel messaging, targeted keyword buys, compelling calls to action, relevant landing pages, and presence on social media sites.
So without further ado, this year’s winners are Pepsi, GoDaddy, and Cars.com. Here’s the breakdown:
- Pepsi
Super Bowl ad veteran Pepsi dialed up its online game this year. The company’s clever TV ad featured the (literally) magnetic Justin Timberlake in an Amazon/Pepsi Stuff promotion. Pepsi called out PepsiStuff.com at the end of the ad, and ran Super Bowl-specific paid search ads that led to that landing page. What’s more, the landing page referenced the Super Bowl and featured the ad, tying together all the messaging. Though they didn’t call out their social media presence on TV, Pepsi did well by posting the ad on its branded YouTube channel, where it has received more than 200,000 views and over 80 comments so far.
- Go Daddy
Go Daddy has consistently turned network objections to its ad content into spectacular buzz (and it doesn’t hurt that their ads rely on beautiful young women and double entendre). This year’s ad involved race car driver Danica Patrick, and just like last year, Go Daddy’s ad was actually a teaser for the “real” censored ad on their website, giving users a big reason to visit. Their search ads were on-message, their landing page relevant, and they also uploaded other rejected ads on their YouTube channel. So it’s no surprise that this is the fourth year in a row that the domain registrar/web host landed a spot among our Scorecard winners.
- Cars.com
Cars.com’s ads were memorable for their freaky witch doctor and absurd voodoo motif. The company’s strategy had its strength in integrated messaging: search ads spoke specifically to TV ad content, they did a great job buying keywords around their TV concept. Cars.com also included a URL in its ad (though it would have been difficult not to - it’s in their name, after all), but they were our only winner missing a call to action. Though they were also the only winner not to include Super Bowl-related content on their social media pages (and didn’t have a corporate presence on social networks), the synergies between search and TV in their campaign were really impressive and effective, landing them squarely in third place.
In all, though their products and services are vastly different, these advertisers really understood the power of their TV spend to lead to measurable web activity, and they were able to deliver strong cross-platform campaigns as a result.
Tune in tomorrow for our post on the Scorecard’s losers and missed opportunities. And if you can’t wait to find out who those brands are, download the full Scorecard now.
Super Bowl Ads Still Missing the Online Picture
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Written By Sepideh Saremi | February 4, 2008 | Share This
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As the Giants gloat and the Patriots sulk, it’s time to take a look at the other players with high stakes in the Super Bowl: the advertisers. Millions of football fans watched the commercials, then turned online to search engines to find out more about their favorites or watch them again. In our fourth annual Search Marketing Scorecard, we ranked Super Bowl advertisers by evaluating how they used search engine marketing to get the most out of all that TV attention on the Web.
With search and social media marketing best practices in mind, we found that many of this year’s advertisers:
- Got better at search, but still need improvement
- Like they last year, advertisers got a little bit better at running paid search this year, but many still missed when it came to integrating their search campaign with their Super Bowl messaging
- Missed big media branding opportunities
- While some brands took full advantage of YouTube, Facebook, and MySpace with custom Super Bowl campaigns, many others didn’t even have official profiles on these pages. In some cases, the content on non-official branded pages was a little risque. And no advertisers had URLs to their social media presence in their TV ads.
- Wasted their shot at celebrity keywords
- Bridgestone had Alice Cooper and Richard Simmons. Sunsilk featured Marilyn Monroe, Shakira, and Madonna. Neither bought these stars’ names as keywords, which is unfortunate because often these stars are the only thing viewers remember about the ad.
A couple of other trends we noticed:
- No TV, just search
- Edmunds.com and ESPN.com both ran search ads for Super Bowl keywords, though neither had skin in the game on TV, so to speak.
- Movie studios still MIA in search
- Besides New Line Cinema’s “Semi-Pro,” most other movies missed out on search marketing altogether, and none bought Super Bowl-related terms. However, about half the films had some social media presence.
For a list of rankings and other notable stats, see our Scorecard brief and download the PDF.
We’ll be covering winners, losers, and high-level trends in far greater detail this week, but it never fails to surprise us how many of the slickest ads fail to follow through online and miss important details. One advertiser, Audi, had a broken link in its search ad during the game, while CareerBuilder.com neglected to buy its “follow your heart” tagline - and competitor Monster.com, not a Super Bowl advertiser this year, swooped in and showed up for that phrase. At the end of the day, you have to wonder what many Super Bowl marketers are thinking when they spend millions on airtime - not to mention ad production and celebrity spokespeople - and forget to make it easy for viewers to find them online.
Super Bowl Scorecard 2008: A Review of 2007 and A Question for Doritos
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Written By Sepideh Saremi | January 31, 2008 | Share This
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It’s t-minus three days to game day and we are preparing for our annual Super Bowl Search Marketing Scorecard, in which we’ll rank advertisers for their strategy (or lack thereof) in cross-channel marketing that integrates their TV and online efforts surrounding the biggest ad day of the year.
Backstory
To get ready to tackle this year’s ads, we’ve spent a lot of time reviewing the performance of last year’s advertisers (here’s the 2007 Scorecard). By and large, they were failures, and last year’s biggest losers were GM, Izod, and Doritos. The automobile industry blew it big-time, despite their slick ads, and many advertisers still didn’t really understand how to best utilize the web to actually engage people, as revealed by their landing pages.
In 2007, our winners may not have had the best TV ads or the biggest names - in fact, a couple of them were downright cheesy - but they really understood how to get a return on their TV ad-buy, by running targeted paid search ads and optimizing their landing pages.
Big Question for Doritos: Will You Fumble Again?
Last year’s fumble by Doritos was especially bittersweet to note. After all, the company arguably had more promising pre-game buzz going than anyone, thanks to their Crash the Super Bowl user-generated video contest, whose winner was determined by peer votes and got aired during the game. A clever concept, it produced a very memorable commercial that ended up being a favorite for many viewers. But though Doritos got good mileage for their ad, they could have made it much bigger if they’d had a search campaign pointing users to the video, and if their landing page wasn’t so confusing.
This year, Doritos is going for round 2 of Crash the Super Bowl, but with a twist that hooks up one winning musician with an ad spot and a record deal. The winner will be revealed on Sunday, and one contestant, Kina Grannis, got herself to the final round with smart Digg-bait that added to Doritos’ buzz. But the company’s Crash the Super Bowl landing page is still Flash-intensive and not user-friendly. And their pre-game SEO and paid search efforts leave a lot to be desired. A Google search for “doritos super bowl ad” shows top results from last year’s contest, and not only has Doritos not paid any attention to optimizing against that this year, it also isn’t running any paid search to drive traffic to the correct pages. Check out the screenshot below (click to enlarge it):
Will Doritos recover by Sunday and make it to our list of winners this year? It’s not looking good yet, but we’ll have to wait and see.
In the meantime, check out our extensive collection of social media screenshots for all the advertisers, and follow our Super Bowl advertising commentary at twitter.com/scorecard.
Super Bowl Insights and $600 Off Admission: Reprise Media at the Online Marketing Summit
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Written By Sepideh Saremi | January 17, 2008 | Share This
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For the last three years, the team at Reprise Media has spent Super Bowl Sundays with its eyes glued to the TV, and like most of America, we’re just as transfixed by the commercials as we are by the football they interrupt. Unlike the rest of the country, though, we huddle around the TV with our laptops, conducting searches on all the major engines to determine the relative Internet marketing-savvy of companies that are spending millions of dollars on the most premium TV airtime.
Each year, we compile and analyze our results in the Super Bowl Search Marketing Scorecard, an in-depth look at how Super Bowl advertisers are using (or, as we’ve often found, not using) search and online media to capture user attention during the biggest game of the year. For the curious, here are our 2005 (PDF), 2006, and 2007 reports. We’re now preparing ourselves for the biggest Scorecard yet.
So if you’re coming to the Online Marketing Summit this year in San Diego, be sure to catch Reprise Media’s Managing Partner, Peter Hershberg, when he presents our 2008 Scorecard findings on Friday morning, February 22.
And if you don’t have your ticket yet, we’ve partnered with the OMS to offer a limited number of tickets at a big discount. The offer’s good until this Saturday, January 19 and, as they say, seats are limited. Go to www.onlinemarketingsummit.com/reprise/ for more details, and see you in San Diego!
Super Bowl XLI Landing Pages - Highlights & Fumbles
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Written By Kate Zimmermann | February 14, 2007 | Share This
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Our ongoing coverage of Super Bowl advertisers continues today with a guest post from our partners over at Optimost, the leading provider of online multivariable testing solutions. Optimost provided all the landing page analysis for the scorecard, so we’ve invited Mark Wachen, the Chief Executive Officer of Optimost, to share his thoughts here on SearchViews.
Reprise Media released a Super Bowl Scorecard that analyzed how advertisers integrated their $2.6 million dollar Super Bowl television ads with their online marketing. Optimost focused specifically on landing pages and website performance. Here’s our color commentary on some of the key players:
Blockbuster – Integrated Campaign Leads to a Touchdown
Their early first quarter advertisement got the game off to a great start with a textbook example of how to integrate offline and online marketing. The television ad drove people to the website, and the landing page imagery tied directly to the Super Bowl spot, and the call-to-action and messaging were crystal clear. A clear, 2-step signup process followed. Although PETA was surely not happy about the mouse abuse in the television spot, in my mind, this was the best individual effort of the game.
Sprint – Leveraged Multiple Media to Get the Point After
After their memorable Connectile Dysfunction ad ran, the Sprint site was very slow to load (ironic given that they were promoting their broadband service), but ultimately they nicely integrated the TV message with the online message. And as the icing on the cake, they leverage a third-medium, print, with a full-page ad on the back of the USA Today’s Monday sports section to further promote the website. It is curious, however, that the Sprint homepage and the print ad mention a Free Mobile Broadband Card promotion, while this same message is not found on the landing page the ads promote.
GoDaddy.com – Liked to Showboat in End Zone
For pure online spectacle, the award has to go to GoDaddy.com. The bad boys of Super Bowl marketing leveraged their Super Bowl tie-in to the hilt, showing not only the ad that ran, but also the ads that were rejected by CBS. They do lose points though for promoting $1.99 domains during the television ad that ran, but then highlighting $8.95/year domains on the landing page, with the $1.99 offer buried below.
Bud Light – Goes Deep with Television Advertisements, Punts with Online Effort
Beer advertisers can’t advertisers in search engine marketing, so all of Anheuser Busch’s spots were unfortunately left off of the Scorecard. That didn’t stop us from evaluating all the other aspects of their campaign. The “Rock, Paper, Scissors” ad for their Bud Light brand was great, but the site needs some work. It’s understandable that their landing page requires you to verify that you are 21 before entering. But the usability of the form entry is very problematic. They require you to enter your birth date in mm-dd-yy format EXACTLY. Stray from this at all, and you’re in trouble. Wonder how many people lost interest at this point?
The ensuing page prominently promotes “TV Commercials” on the top right of the page, yet clicking on this does not lead to the Super Bowl ads. These can only be found by clicking on Bud Bowl 07 on the right - . but when was there any mention of Bud Bowl? And why are they requiring you to choose a media player and bandwidth? With $30 million apparently invested in their Bud.TV effort, they certainly could have spent a little more on usability.
Flomax – Sacked in End Zone for Unintentionally Promoting Another Company
You’ve got to hand it to Flomax, but not the Flomax you’re thinking of. Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals ran a fourth quarter ad for its prostate drug, Flomax. Many people who were interested in this drug surely pointed their browsers to the obvious place, www.flomax.com. Yet on this site, instead of learning about Benign Prostatic Hyperplasia, they instead found information about Flomax Products, Inc. a California-based provider of valve automation services. To Flomax (the drug’s) credit, they did highlight the “4Flomax.com” URL in the television ad, and their landing page was clear and to the point. But I can’t help thinking what a banner day it must have been for Flomax Products, Inc. of Livermore, CA – Super Bowl-style traffic without spending a dime.
So there you have it. Overall, a pretty good showing by the advertisers in Super Bowl XLI, but there is still a ways to go. Some suggestions for next year’s Super Bowl advertisers include:
- Reward visitors who saw the Super Bowl television ad and go visitto the website
- Use the website to generate buzz and solicit input before and after the Super Bowl
- Be consistent in messages and offers across television ads and web pages
- Make the website easy to navigate and understand
With some simple changes, we’re certain 2008 will bring an even better integration of online and offline media in the premiere sports and television event of the year.
If you want to learn more about who succeeded and fumbled in the Super Bowl online marketing game, please check out the Search Marketing Scorecard (PDF) that Reprise Media produced in conjunction with Optimost.
Optimost is a technology and services company specializing in comprehensive real-time testing and conversion rate marketing. For more information about Optimost, please visit our website www.optimost.com.
Read some Optimost success stories to learn how clients achieved success using our platform, If you would like someone to contact you from Optimost, please click here.
Super Bowl 2007: Automobile Ads Missed the Point
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Written By Kate Zimmermann | February 8, 2007 | Share This
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Take a second look at our Super Bowl Search Marketing Scorecard and you’ll notice that the lower half of our list is largely populated by automobile brands. GM, Chevrolet, Ford, Acura and Mercedes all received mediocre scores, while Toyota and Honda received slightly higher average scores. Now, I’ve been to several trade show where speakers from the marketing departments of Ford, Chevrolet, Toyota, etc, will tout their sophisticated adoption of new media and consumer-generated “engagement”, giving the impression that these guys know how to create integrated cross-channel campaigns. So what’s the deal? Why is it that all car makers, across the board, fell short during the Super Bowl?
A Hitwise study gleans some insight,
“We rarely compile custom categories of unrelated sties, and just seeing how a site like careerbuilder.com ranks against Toyota is eye-opening. Both sites are #1 in their respective categories, but Careerbuilder.com has a market share of visits 16x greater than Toyota…To me, it demonstrates the importance of online brand management through consumer generated media.”
Check out LeeAnn Prescott’s full report for more interesting traffic stats from Super Bowl Sunday. Granted, for businesses like CareerBuilder.com that are entirely internet-based, you’d expect a significantly higher market share. But, compared to other consumer-product companies that primarily use their websites for branding (rather than online sales), the automakers fall short.
That’s not to say they didn’t spend money - other than the alcohol industry (dominated by Bud/Bud Light), car makers bought the largest number of super bowl TV spots. Their commercials were sleek, well-composed, and heavily focused on cinematography. As such, they generated a significant amount of interest from viewers who went online seeking replays of the commercials. Rather than find paid ads from the car companies, however, searchers found affiliate sites, spam sites, and Edmunds.com. Edmunds, incidentally, did a brilliant job of aggregating commercial replays and buying paid search against all brands. In the meantime, automakers were completely absent in search for branded and generic terms. Following GM and Ford’s well-integrated hybrid car ads last year, this came as a bit of a surprise.
Despite their relative absence in paid search, the two areas where automakers fell most short were a) Having a call to action, b) Integrating their TV commercial with their website. 90% of the automakers didn’t reference the super bowl on their home pages, 90% lacked a CTA in both their TV ads and online, 90% didn’t offer replays of their TV ads, and 100% did not create landing pages integrated with their commercials (based on Reprise Media data). As a result, car makers didn’t give any incentive to visit or explore their sites.
As Prescott writes in her report, consumer-generated media was a major part of this year’s Super Bowl ad campaigns. There’s tremendous opportunity for an industry whose brands are so richly infused with our culture to leverage their popularity by promoting content that can be picked up by CGM websites- namely, YouTube, Revver, Myspace, etc. But mere presence in those sites is meaningless if it’s disconnected from the automakers website. As it stands, most automakers treat their sites like an extension of their brochures - which, no matter how slick in design, is poor use of the Internet.
Super Bowl 2007: Who Were the Big Search Losers?
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Written By Kate Zimmermann | February 7, 2007 | Share This
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Yesterday we presented the three winning advertisers from our Super Bowl Search Marketing Scorecard. Today, however, we’d like to take a look on the flip side - the least connected, worst presented, the most un-search-savvy and under-represented 30 second spots in the Super Bowl…
The ScoreCard Fumbles
GM
Though GM’s assembly line ad was cute, the promotion was poorly executed. Within the ad itself, the only visible link between the commercial and their website was a small “GM.com” logo at the end. GM could have created any number of incentives to encourage people go online - more information, commercial replays, even a background story about their suicidal robot - but, without some call to action, they failed to guide viewers from the TV to the Internet. In terms of SEM, GM lacked a search presence for both branded and generic terms. Though GM’s landing page included images from the TV ad and an offer to learn more about warranties, without relevant traffic from paid search, it went to little effect.IZOD
Stylish? Yes. Pointless? Yes. IZOD’s TV commercial had no call to action and no information about the product. As a result, we were blindly guessing search terms that might bring us to an ad. Their website entry page is again, very sleek, but also a usability nightmare. Difficult to navigate and with no mention of the Super Bowl, the IZOD site did not give viewers any clear direction or incentive to stay.DORITOS
As one of the most sensationalized “new media” advertisers this year, I was surprised by how poorly Doritos implemented SEM. The site itself has too much Flash, usability issues and is impossibly slow to upload. Because the site is set up like a 3-D world, I found myself clicking on stuff at random, hoping it would turn into a video. Considering Doritos’ extensive pre-game promotion for the Crash the Super Bowl contest, it’s a huge disappointment to see them fall flat in the aftermath.
The fact that each of these ads is rated highly in YouTube’s SuperVote competition indicates that they missed out big time by not properly integrating SEM. Each of them undoubtedly poured enormous budgets into the production and pre-game promotion of their ads, which makes their lack of presence post-game an even bigger fumble.
For a full overview of our Scorecard or to download the PDF, check out the Reprise Media website.
Super Bowl 2007: Which Advertisers Won the Search Game?
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Written By Kate Zimmermann | February 6, 2007 | Share This
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Yesterday we released our Super Bowl Search Marketing Scorecard, Reprise Media’s annual study of advertisers during the big game. Today I’m pleased to announce the Winners from the Scorecard, with more detail on how each one delivered a touchdown performance.
Our team evaluated each ad in three main areas: 1. The TV commercial; 2. Paid Search; and 3. Landing pages. We measured integration between these three elements, looking at the consistency of message, calls to action, cross-sells, incentives, keywords, and usability. In general, we were interested in the structure of the cross-marketing campaign and application of search marketing best practices.
On that note, Searchviews would like to say CONGRATULATIONS to… (drumroll please)..
SalesGenie.com, Godaddy.com, and King Pharmaceuticals.
These three brands consistently delivered tightly integrated cross-media campaigns, using sophisticated paid search techniques.
- SalesGenie.com
Is it any surprise that the best cross-media advertiser is a Sales Lead Generation firm? SalesGenie clearly laid out its value proposition in a series of straight-forward commercials. Though a first-time Super Bowl advertiser, they used familiar direct response tactics to draw viewers from their commercial to the internet. Each TV spot ended with a strong call to action (100 free leads for interested consumers) and a URL. The call to action, in this case especially, is the main impetus driving people from analogue to online - and thus arguably the most important piece of a cross-marketing campaign. Once online, SalesGenie’s paid search ads used branded and generic key terms like “Sales Genie”, “Sales Leads”, and “Super Bowl Ads”. Ad copy referred to the same 100 Free Leads incentive offered by TV commercials, calling it the “Super Bowl Special”. Finally, their website invited users to rate different versions of their commercials that were available for re-play. It included the 100 free leads order form, an opportunity to submit 2008 Super Bowl commercial ideas, and overview info about SalesGenie’s services. - GoDaddy.com
Though GoDaddy’s provocative commercials received a lot of negative publicity in the lead up to the game, they managed to spin it into positive online activity. Their ‘behind the scenes’ look at GoDaddy’s marketing department didn’t just feature a broad range of celebrities, it created a teaser for the “censored” ads that GoDaddy made available online. Their paid search keywords included “GoDaddy” “Super Bowl Ad” “Domain Hosting” and even “Danica Patrick”. Once on-site, GoDaddy offered about 10 ads to watch, inclduing two from last year’s GoDaddy girls, with links to the CEO’s blog and a special offer for $6.95 domain hosting. - King Pharmaceuticals
King Pharmaceuticals’ amusing ‘heart attack’ commercial ended with a long, audible call to action that focused on the web URL. Paid search keywords included brand terms as well as catch phrases (”beat your own risk”). Ad copy was all call-to-action: “Watch the commercial and learn about heart attack risk and prevention.” Finally, K.P. created a special HTML-only landing page with several calls to action to accompany its flash-based tools. By using HTML, K.P. was sensitive to the fact that not everyone has the bandwith or patience to wait for a flash-based site to load.
In sum, though these may not have been the funniest or most entertaining commercials, they delivered the best cross-media campaigns. Tomorrow we’ll dish on the flip side and announce are three biggest Super Bowl losers. If you absolutely can’t wait for tomorrow’s post, you can also go download the full Scorecard PDF from the Reprise Media website.
stay tuned…
Super Bowl Ads Missed Big Opportunities
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Written By Kate Zimmermann | February 5, 2007 | Share This
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With another Super Bowl in the books, it’s time to sit back and review the real winners and losers in Sunday’s big game: the advertisers. The interest generated by their commercials translated into millions of searches as viewers around the world “Googled” the products and services they featured. We took a look at how companies used search marketing to turn that buzz into measurable Web activity. In our third annual “Search Marketing Scorecard”, we’ve ranked Super Bowl advertisers based on their ability to use search engines as a link between their TV ads and a web presence.
Based on our evaluation of multiple search marketing best practices, we found that this year’s advertisers are:
- Improved, But Still Underperforming
Super Bowl advertisers did a better job integrating their online and offline efforts this year, but there were still a significant number of missed opportunities. Few companies put together all the elements necessary to translate interest and buzz into web activity. - Lacking Calls to Action
Advertisers continued to overlook the value of having a strong call to action in their commercials. While a majority of companies provided URLs during their ads, less than 20% actually gave viewers a compelling reason to visit their website. - All Buzz, No Substance
Companies like Doritos, Chevrolet, and the NFL featured buzz-worthy consumer-generated ads, inviting user participation and interaction with the brand. However, these commercials did a poor job of directing users to online destinations, failing to capitalize on the opportunity to expand the communities they had built prior to the game.
Some notable trends this year include:
- Use of YouTube
One terrific example of new media marketing came from Pizza Hut. Though its commercial wasn’t consumer-generated, Pizza Hut used paid search to link users to a customized YouTube channel instead of its own corporate site, allowing visitors to continue a dialogue about its ads and products. - Auto Makers Still Missing the Extra Point
Though they purchased a significant number of TV ads, Automotive advertisers were again among the biggest losers in cross-channel integration, with poor visibility across Google, Yahoo and other major search engines.
To see a list of the best and worst advertisers with notable statistics, visit the Reprise Media Scorecard brief, or download the full PDF.
Though I’ll go into greater detail on winners, losers, and trends later this week, I’m generally surprised by how many advertisers did a half-assed job on cross-channel marketing. Integration of on and offline messages is no longer considered cutting edge. Brands capable of Super-Bowl-caliber advertising should at the very least understand how to bring together multiple points of contact online. That means, not just having a website, but using paid search to connect the dots between the TV ad, a compelling call to action, a dynamic landing page, and new media marketing (aka: YouTube).
This brings us to another interesting thought - once the best practices that we measure become ubiquitous, and all advertisers have established dynamic cross-media marketing campaigns with fully integrated search techniques… what’s next? How might our scorecard evaluation change next year, or in five years?
More thoughts to come…
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