Domain Name News

Godaddy Premium Listings Turned Off During SuperBowl Ad Time

Posted: 07 Feb 2011 02:13 PM PST

DNN received several reports during the Super Bowl that Godaddy had removed Premium Listings from being displayed. Elliot’s Blog made mention of this possibility and today we received confirmation from Paul Nicks, Director of Godaddy Aftermarket, that the company did indeed pull Premium Listings during the Super Bowl.

Nicks confirmed that the listings were removed but were quickly put back in to play . He assured DNN that the Premium channel would benefit from much of the post-game marketing blitz that Godaddy is conducting even still.

Nicks told DNN

“It is true that for a small portion of time around the airing of the two commercials, the Premium Listing service was static. GoDaddy.com optimizes the site to handle the crush of web traffic coming to us for Super Bowl ads. People were visiting the site to see the Super Bowl commercials and that’s what we provided, a secure, safe and solid website.”

Godaddy has been making strides to become a player in the domain aftermarket and the chance to benefit from the traffic from a Super Bowl ad obviously would be very appealing to anyone selling in the aftermarket. Godaddy even issued a statement on January 31st touting the Super Bowl ad timing as a great time for customers to “leverage the Super Bowl Glow” to sell through the Premium Listings. While one would have assumed the best time to benefit would have been during the ad rush, it looks like Godaddy considers the timing before and after the Super Bowl ads to be the “Super Bowl Glow”.

Nicks continues, ”An exciting element to consider, one we did not tout in our news release, is the amount of publicity that would drive visitors and potential customers to our website in the days preceding the game. Go Daddy clips and commercials were shown on network news programs, syndicated entertainment programs and discussed in major print and online publications, starting January 31st. Many highlighted Go Daddy’s successful strategies and history with driving traffic to the website. This helped our Premium Listing customers in ways we did not predict.”

“We are exceeding our own expectations for web traffic today, following the game and our Premium Listing service is certainly benefiting from increased exposure. Last night’s commercials are generating a tremendous amount of publicity today, as critics discuss the ads. We are also executing a major media tour in New York City right now with our new GoDaddy.CO Girl, Joan Rivers. We expect her talking about domain names in the mainstream media will help sustain interest beyond this morning.”

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