Dot-com commercials during Super Bowl XXXIV
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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][note 1] 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.[2] 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";[3] it is often used as a high-water mark for the dot-com bubble.[4][5][6] Of these companies, four are still active, five were bought by other companies, and the remaining five are defunct or of unknown status.[when?]
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.[7] 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.[8] 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.[2]
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,[9][10] and nicknamed the 2022 game the "Crypto Bowl".[11][12] Following a similar crash in cryptocurrencies, as well as major cryptocurrency exchange FTX filing for bankruptcy in November 2022, it and multiple other cryptocurrency-related companies that had bought ad space for the following Super Bowl (Super Bowl LVII) pulled out, resulting in no cryptocurrency-related ads airing that year.[13]
In-game ads
The following list details each company, the commercials they ran, and their ultimate fate. All spots were 30 seconds long.
| Company | Commercial Title(s) | Company Status |
|---|---|---|
| AutoTrader.com[14] | "I Need a Car" | Active |
| Computer.com[5] | "Mike and Mike"[3] | Purchased by Office Depot in 2000[3] |
| e1040.com | "Charity" | Defunct; parent company Gilman Ciocia merged with National Holdings Corporation in 2013[15] |
| Epidemic.com[1] | "Bathroom" | Defunct in 2000 |
| E-Stamp.com | "Time Saving Tips" | Defunct; domain name redirects to Stamps.com |
| HotJobs.com[1] | "Negotiations" | Bought by Yahoo! in 2002, later purchased and liquidated by Monster.com in 2010 |
| LastMinuteTravel.com[7] | "Tornado" | Active; merged with Tourico Holidays in 2004,[16] which itself was acquired by Hotelbeds Group in 2017[17] |
| LifeMinders.com[1] | "The Worst Commercial" | Purchased by Cross Media Group in 2001[18] |
| Monster.com[1] | "The Road Less Travelled" | Active; acquired by Randstad NV in 2016 |
| OnMoney.com[19] | "Paper Monster" | Defunct in 2002 |
| Netpliance[1] | "Webhead" | Rebranded as TippingPoint in 2002, purchased by 3Com in 2005 |
| OurBeginning.com[8][20] | "Invites" | Purchased by an undisclosed company in 2002 |
| Pets.com[1] | "If You Leave Me Now" | Defunct in 2000, Liquidated in 2001; redirects to PetSmart's website |
| WebMD[1] | "Ali" | Active; acquired by Internet Brands in 2017 |
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.
| Company | Commercial Title(s) | Spot Length | Company Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| Britannica | Active (online only; print edition ceased publication in 2010) | ||
| E*Trade[1] | "Wasted 2 Million", "Out the Wazoo", "Basketball Prodigy" | 0:30 each | Active (acquired by Morgan Stanley in 2020) |
| Electronic Data Systems | "Cat herders" | Purchased by HP in 2008[21] | |
| Kforce | Active | ||
| MicroStrategy[1] | "Fraud", "Stock Alert" | 0:30 each | Active |
Pre-game ads
The following list details companies which ran ads prior to the actual game time.
| Company | Commercial Title(s) | Spot Length | Company Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| Computer.com | "Untitled 1", "Untitled 2"[3] | 0:30 each | Purchased by Office Depot in 2000[3] |
| OurBeginning.com | "Untitled 1", "Untitled 2", "Untitled 3" | 0:30 each | Purchased by an undisclosed company in 2002 |
