Internet traffic to the web sites of Super Bowl advertisers surged in the fourth quarter of last night's game, according to content delivery network Akamai, which saw traffic to advertiser sites spike to nearly 750,000 visitors per minute as the game reached its climactic moments.
What were the URLs that TV watchers were typing into their laptops at that peak usage period late in the game? A review of fourth quarter ads shows several sleeper possibilities from Pepsi and Hulu.com. But there's a good chance the spike was related to the fourth quarter spot with the most direct web "call to action" - the latest Go Daddy breast-obsessed ad urging viewers to go to GoDaddy.com for the "too hot for TV Internet-only" version.
The Go Daddy ad, which featured race car driver Danica Patrick and a cameo by CEO Bob Parsons, ended with a well-endowed model threatening to show off her "enhancements." The 30-second spot had the most viewers of any Super Bowl ad in a second-by-second measurement of 30,000 households with TiVo Inc.’s digital video recorders.
The other late-game possibility was Hulu.com's ad featuring Alec Baldwin as a space alien using web video to turn Earthlings brains to mush. While not as compelling a call to action, a visit to Hulu should generate meaningful bandwidth consumption.
UPDATE: Contentinople has additional data confirming our hunches about the big traffic drivers. GoDaddy.com went from an average of 10,000 visitors per minute to 134,328, which was sustained for 10 to 15 minutes after the first ad. It alsocites traffic gams for Hulu, calling it "the clear winner of the Super Bowl ad blitz."
Here's my question: How could these folks be surfing the web during the deciding moments of the most exciting Super Bowl in history?
