Taking a page from Tim O’Reilly’s playbook with his presentation last year at OSCON, What Book Sales Tell Us About the State of the Tech Industry I thought it would be fun to examine this years batch of Superbowl ads to determine anything useful.

Premise

I have been fascinated by the connection between advertising, culture, and business for as long as I can remember. I get especially interested in trying to detect any patterns in Superbowl advertising. One of the most famous trends detected by these announcements was the appearance of the dot com explosion eight or so years ago.The last couple of years the trends were escapism with movie ads dominating the line-up during the technology bust of 2003, and the erectile dysfunction bowl from last year.

This should all be taken in perspective. Although these ads can be terribly entertaining, they aren’t particularly useful as marketing. Just try this test for yourself. On Thursday ask some friends if they can name the companies related to these ads from this year: guy working with monkeys (yes I know, name any company), burnt sunbathing beauty, weight-loss pill, inaction heroes, and hero salute. If your friends are like most people, they will be lucky to name at least two of the brands associated with these ads. This analysis looks deep into the companies that paid for these ads to determine their motivation.

No shows

First, something notable was the complete absence of most of the “leaders” in the technology industry. Although most of these companies have advertised in the past, they did not purchase any time in this years game: IBM, HP, Microsoft, Apple (except for iTunes, and we’ll examine that next) CA, Oracle, Sun Microsystems, Novell, Siebel, SAP, Accenture, and Gateway.

Quickly, there are only a few reasons why companies pass up the big game. One, they don’t have anything to say. Two, they don’t believe that they need to advertise. Three, they don’t want to spend the money (or don’t have it). Or, but most unlikely, they understand that viewers have developed an immunity to advertising as I eluded above. Except for admitting that viewer immunity exists, the other three reasons are bad news for any company.

Online music war?

With both iTunes and Napster both running two 30 second ads, we can safely say that the digital music business is heating up. Add into this mix, the return of Michael Robertson, of mp3.com and Lindows (oops I mean Linspire) fame, to the digital music business with mp3tunes.com and I’d say we have the beginning of a real change in the music industry. My only hope is that the success of these sites will bring an end to the awful practices of the RIAA.

I have my doubts about the new Napster business model. Yes they have an all you can eat service, but you can only keep eating as long as you are a valid Napster customer. If you let you Napster account run out, then all of the music you have accumulated becomes garbage. It would be tragic if I let my Wired subscription lapse, but I can always go back and re-read the back issues any time I want (or even easier just look it up on-line). So I’m not sure if this is the right way to manage digital rights.

Dot com disappearance?

careerbuilder.com was the only other dot com to make an appearance in this years game. (Editorial correction: I heard later today that GoDaddy.com also had an add, but it must have been before the game or when I dozed off when Philadelphia had the ball and then I woke-up and New England had it and I was like whoa, what happened?) Checking into careerbuilder, I think it may have been worth the investment. According to the news on their site, they surpassed Monster.com several times in 2004 by receiving more job seeker traffic. This was news to me, so in that sense it may have been worth it.

I’m actually glad to hear of GoDaddy, because I get to share what I like to call the numbers game. You can play along at home, it’s easy. First the estimated cost of 30 second spot was $2.4 million. To earn back their investment they will have to sell 268,156 domain names. They better hope the IETF adds some more top level domains (I suggest .spam, .bull, and .junk). Of course they hope to turn some of those domains into hosting contracts, the domains are just the hook.

Now, let’s play the numbers game with careerbuilder. Since the took out three spots, their bill is $7.2 million. To earn back their investment they will have to place 20,055 applicants. That certainly looks achievable, but I’m sure they are hoping that their forecasts are correct and 2005 will show increased spending and hiring.

Conclusions

I think there is a clear trend for increased competition in on-line digital music. Apple certainly looks hard to catch at this point, however I think it is important that competitors survive to keep Apple honest. I think careerbuilder and GoDaddy are both making a very calculated wager. Both are seemingly somewhat stable dot com businesses with fairly well known business models. Both companies are private so I can’t root around in their garbage to see if anything stinks, although those ROI calculations seem pretty smelly.

The big mystery for me was the complete absence of the big boys, and girl. Some of the companies in my the MIA list are chugging along fairly well, so I’ll assume that they were just not interested. However there are a few names on the list that are battling for their lives, so I’ll assume that the cost was just too high considering the stakes they are already playing for, existence.

Did you catch any technology trends from this batch of ads?