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 percent 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 been referred to as the "Dot-Com Super Bowl", [3] and 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.
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]
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 |
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 |
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 |