In the business world, that amorphous concept called "consumer confidence" is measured in dozens of metrics, algorithms, and white papers. In the real world, there are Super Bowl ads. So, unsurprisingly, if you look at the lineup of Super Bowl ads from tech companies this year, the outlook isn't sunny.
Virtually all the electronic and digital brands running ads at this year's game between the Arizona Cardinals and Pittsburgh Steelers have advertised at the Super Bowl in past years: domain giant GoDaddy, job search sites Monster.com and CareerBuilder, brokerage house E-Trade, and online auto marketplace Cars.com. There's a hype-filled new ad about "smart grid" innovation, but it's run by General Electric, parent company of this year's Super Bowl broadcaster NBC.
"There's not that many of us," said Richard Castellini, chief marketing officer for CareerBuilder, which has partnered with Facebook and its "Engagement Ads" program to poll members of the social-networking site on both the game outcome and their favorite parts of CareerBuilder's 60-second ad. "It's a challenging environment, as we all know."
In other words, we'll soon see that 2009 won't be like "1984." With price tags that can reach nearly $3 million and the inevitable need to compete with garish offerings from food and beverage brands like Anheuser-Busch and its army of Clydesdale horses, Super Bowl ads are something that could disappear quickly from a budget amid financial panic, and that newer entrants in the industry might opt to skip. Or at least most venture capital firms and shareholders would hope so.
Indeed, some of last year's tech advertisers have opted not to participate. GPS manufacturer Garmin, which ran an ad in the second quarter of Super Bowl XLII, will not be running an ad this year. Neither will online lead generator Salesgenie.com, which was criticized for racially insensitive ads last year and first ran Super Bowl ads in 2007. Representatives from Dell, which ran an ad in conjunction with the Project RED awareness campaign last year and has made no mention of doing another ad this year, could not be reached for comment.
Some of those sticking around have changed their tune. "Last year we were really an occupational vigilante, the one who came into the room and shook you up," CareerBuilder's Castellini said of the company's last ad campaign, which had a 'quit your job and improve your life' theme. "(This year) we're launching an overall campaign that's going to be more spurred toward helpful insights and your job search."
On the flip side, it's not as though Super Bowl XLII in 2008 was stuffed with tech ads; the industry's presence at the game has been quiet in recent years. During the Super Bowl in 2000, a whopping 40 percent of the ads came from dot-coms in a bubbly parade led by the infamous Pets.com sock puppet.
Since then, on the scale of Silicon Valley silliness-to-be-avoided, coughing up the money for a Super Bowl ad has ranked up there with putting a basketball hoop in the conference room. It's become clear in recent months that the tech industry didn't learn all its lessons from the last market crash, but even though the open-bar launch parties and dubious business models came back, $3 million for a 30-second ad remained gauche.
Established consumer electronics and telecom brands have kept running Super Bowl ads, to an extent, but the Web companies have been largely limited to job-hunting and finance-related brands. After all, the Web 2.0 era has been defined largely by the rise of a company--Google--that has never run a television advertisement for any of its own products.
Making the most of digital tie-ins
The tech industry is still scrambling for the spotlight in this year's game, but for the most part, it's not by running ads: digital tie-ins, predictably, are a big deal. CareerBuilder has its Facebook partnership. There's been another user-generated ad contest for Doritos, as there have been for the past few years.
The PepsiCo.-owned brand SoBe LifeWater will be running the first-ever 3D Super Bowl ad, and said in a New York press conference earlier this week that it has produced nearly 130 million pairs of 3D glasses for it. Powered by Intel's InTru3D technology, the goggles (emblazoned with Intel logos) are being distributed at LifeWater displays in supermarkets and big-box retailers. GoDaddy, a longtime Super Bowl advertiser, is accompanying its two commercials with a Web-only version that it claims is too hot for TV.
E-Trade has bought a front-page video ad on the Google-owned YouTube to "tease" its Super Bowl ad, and YouTube will be encouraging viewers to vote on their favorite ads after the game. AOL, too, plans to aggregate all commercials on its Fanhouse.com sports property.
As many anticipated months in advance, the Super Bowl ad lookout is dreary across the board. But there's one potential bright spot: Earlier this week, video hub Hulu announced unexpectedly that it would be running an ad. Hulu, joint-owned by Super Bowl broadcaster NBC, has kept its television debut conspicuously cloak-and-dagger other than to say the spot will "reveal the secret" to its product and launch its first television ad campaign.
It might come across as a last-ditch effort on the part of beleaguered broadcast media, but the news of the Hulu ad certainly set off some speculation in the blogosphere. Will there be new content partners announced? Or some nifty new features? Cynics, all too used to disappointment and gloomy headlines these days, figured it will probably just be a marketing pitch to Super Bowl viewers who might not have heard about Hulu yet. They may well be correct.
But as much as they might not admit it, more than a few media geeks are probably going to have their ears perked up in anticipation of the Hulu spot. These days, those of us in the digital business are hungering for some excitement, some innovation, and some good news--and some buffalo wings, and nachos, and nail-biting fourth-quarter moments on the field.
Well, well, well. Here's something that just came into my inbox, and presumably the inboxes of the rest of the digital-media press corps: an e-mail from the media team at Hulu, the joint video venture between NBC Universal and News Corp., announcing that the company will be running an ad during Sunday's Super Bowl XLIII. Considering the game airs on NBC, a Hulu ad is not too hard to fathom.
It seems like there's always a rumor about some huge tech announcement that will come to light during the annual football-and-advertising bacchanalia, like that Beatles-iTunes thing two years ago that never surfaced. But at least we know this one actually exists, and to boot, it sounds like Hulu is really hoping to make a splash along the lines of Apple's landmark "1984" ad that aired 25 years ago.
"During Super Bowl XLIII this Sunday, look for the launch of Hulu's ad campaign," the e-mail read. "Finally, we'll reveal the secret behind Hulu."
Ooh! Secrets! I love secrets! Clearly we will learn one of three things this Sunday:
1. Hulu is the Matrix.
2. Hulu is Luke Skywalker's father.
3. Hulu is people.
Aw, heck. With a revelation like this on the way, who cares whether the Steelers or Cardinals win?
A freshly minted blog network called SportsBlog Nation (or SB Nation, as it calls itself) has secured a round of funding in the "mid-seven figures," Sports Business Journal reported Monday.
Jim Bankoff, who once served as chief of programming at AOL, put the round together and will serve as chairman of the board at SportsBlog Nation, which boasts more than 150 blogs, each one dedicated to a different college or professional sports team.
The funding round was led by Accel Partners, best known these days for having been an early investor in Facebook; partner Jim Breyer holds a minority stake in the Boston Celtics. Also contributing were Ted Leonsis, former AOL vice chairman and owner of the Washington Capitals; former Yahoo executives Dan Rosensweig and Jeff Weiner; football-player-turned-private-equity manager Brent Jones; investment bank Allen & Co.; and several executives from Providence Equity Partners, where Bankoff is an adviser.
The Washington, D.C.-based SportsBlog Nation has been in development for about a year, Sports Business Journal wrote.
Social network Bebo announced on Tuesday that it has made short-form video content from sports entertainment conglomerate ESPN available to its U.S. visitors. The programming available will include recap show SportsCenter Right Now, as well as clips from Mike and Mike in the Morning, Pardon the Interruption, Around the Horn, and select news and game footage.
It's a partnership that was first announced nearly a year ago but which has only now taken effect. The ESPN content will be incorporated into "Open Media," Bebo's project to provide more audio and video content to members of its "social-media network" (emphasis on the "media"). Open Media was launched last November with partners including ESPN, as well as Viacom's MTV, the BBC, and CNET Networks parent CBS.
There are plenty of old-media companies involved in this deal. ESPN is owned 80 percent by the Disney's ABC and 20 percent by Hearst. Bebo has been owned by AOL since early this year, after an $850 million acquisition by the Time Warner subsidiary.
But despite its domestic ownership, the youth-oriented Bebo is still most popular in the United Kingdom and Ireland. Adding ESPN content is another move toward capturing a bigger audience in the United States, where MySpace remains the top social network.
There's been another victory on the water for ConnectU founders Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss--even as their court case against Facebook continues to peter out unfavorably.
The identical twins, representing the United States in the men's pair (M2-) event of the Olympic rowing races in Beijing, placed second in their Wednesday semifinal to advance to the grand final.
At the 500-meter mark, a quarter of the way through the race, the Winklevosses were in fifth place out of the six boats. But they powered through crews from Germany, Serbia, and Italy to cross the finish line just less than 2.5 seconds behind the winning Australian crew of Drew Ginn and Duncan Free. The U.S. pair's final time was 6:36.65.
The Winklevosses are best known in the tech world for having founded ConnectU, a social network for college students that once employed Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg as a programmer. ConnectU's founders--the twins, along with Harvard classmate Divya Narendra--began seeking legal action against Zuckerberg and Facebook in 2004, long before its Silicon Valley deification.
They alleged that Zuckerberg, a Harvard colleague, had swiped ConnectU's business plan and development code in order to kick-start Facebook; courts, however, have been skeptical because of the casual, dorm room nature of the company's early days. No formal contracts were signed, weakening ConnectU argument, and even though the case has been settled, the plaintiffs have continued to fight due to a dispute over Facebook's valuation.
Things have thus far fared much better for the Winklevosses in Beijing, where rowing insiders say the twins were not expected to win a spot in the grand final. In the race on Saturday, they will be up against the German and Australian crews, as well as the top three finishers from the event's other semifinal: Canada, New Zealand, and South Africa.
If they place first, second, or third in that race, they'll have some medals to take home.
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ConnectU founders Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss pulled through in a repechage (second-chance heat) on Monday on the Olympic rowing course in Beijing, where they're representing the United States in the men's pair event.
The identical twins, best-known in the tech world for being two-thirds of the Harvard-founded start-up that foisted an intellectual-property suit upon Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, had failed to immediately qualify for the semifinals in their Saturday heat. They'd placed fifth and needed a third-place finish to qualify. But the repechage offered another chance for them to earn a shot at the semifinals, which take place on Wednesday.
The Winklevoss twins proceeded to win their repechage, beating the second-place Croatian pair of Niksa and Sinisa Selin--who are also brothers, albeit not twins. The Croatian brothers medaled in both the 2000 Olympics in Sydney (in the men's eight) and in the 2004 Olympics in Athens (in the pair).
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Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, the identical twins who went from a legal spat with Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg to a berth on the Olympic rowing team, didn't do so well in Beijing on Saturday. In the preliminary heat for their event, the men's pair (M2-), they placed fifth out of five boats.
In the 2000-meter course, the twins came in with a time of 7:13.64, behind the fourth-place Polish team with a time of 7:01.90. The top three places were taken by the French, Italian, and Canadian teams respectively.
They were in a tough heat: the French and Canadian pairs had both medaled in recent world championship events. And in international rowing events, you're never eliminated after the first round, so the U.S. pair will have a chance to compete again in a repechage (second-chance round) on Sunday to try to earn a spot in the semifinal.
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Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss have been in the press a lot recently for being "those guys who sued Facebook." As two of the three founders of ConnectU, they had accused Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg of intellectual property theft long before he was Silicon Valley's youngest billionaire. Unfortunately, courts didn't tend to side with the brothers Winklevoss, largely because the dorm-room start-up didn't have formal paperwork to prove a breach of contract.
That case has been settled (though ConnectU has contested it), and the Winklevosses--a pair of six-foot, five-inch identical twins with a penchant for wearing matching outfits--are in pursuit of something else. They're on the U.S. Olympic rowing team in Beijing, participating in the men's pair event (referred to in shorthand as M2-). That means they're in a two-person boat, each with one oar; not to be confused with the men's double event (M2x), in which each of the rowers has two oars.
Want to see these guys row? You can watch it online starting very, very early on Saturday morning. The NBC Olympics site will be streaming the first set of rowing heats starting at 1:50 p.m. Saturday, Beijing time, and the Winklevosses will be in the first heat of the men's pair event, which goes off at 4:10 p.m. That's 4:10 a.m. Eastern time, or 1:10 a.m. Pacific time. They'll be up against teams from Italy, France, Canada, and Poland; if they place first, second, or third, the U.S. pair will go straight to the semifinal on Wednesday. If not, they'll have another shot at it during a repechage event on Sunday.
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Big-name professional athletes are known for throwing money around almost as much as they throw balls, but it's not every day you hear about them investing in a social-networking site. Youth sports network Weplay, however, is an exception: Derek Jeter, Peyton Manning, and LeBron James have joined its $8.6 million Series B funding round, announced Tuesday.
The round was led by Deep Fork Capital, which has invested recently in mobile networking start-up Moblyng and visual search site SearchMe. In addition to the well-moneyed jocks, existing investor FirstMark Capital contributed.
Weplay's Series A round, announced earlier this year, was led by FirstMark and had participation from other current and former pro athletes like basketball player Tony Parker, soccer player Brandi Chastain, and swimmer Summer Sanders as well as Silicon Valley regular Ron Conway. The Creative Artists Agency and Major League Baseball Advanced Media have also invested.
The site itself is intended as a hub for youth athletes, their parents and coaches, and other enthusiasts where they can safely network, share photos, and keep track of their favorite teams as well as share their own on-the-field antics.
Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss might not have gotten their way with Mark Zuckerberg, but they've got a different prize in mind now: Olympic glory.
Tyler Winklevoss, one-third of ConnectU's founding and one-half of the U.S. men's straight pair.
(Credit: usrowing.org)The identical twins, who founded one-time Facebook rival ConnectU with their Harvard classmate Divya Narendra, have earned spots on the U.S. Olympic rowing team that will compete later this summer in Beijing. The team's roster was announced Friday and is currently pending approval by the United States Olympic Committee.
Recently, the Winklevoss twins have been in the news because of their long-running lawsuit against Facebook founder Zuckerberg, whom they had once hired as a programmer for ConnectU.
Since 2004, they have alleged that he stole their business plan and source code. The legal fight dragged on until a settlement was reached earlier this year. Then, however, ConnectU's lawyers challenged the agreement and claimed that Facebook had committed fraud. Earlier this week, a judge decided to enforce the settlement, which provided ConnectU with a mixture of cash and stock (effectively, an acquisition by Facebook).
It was no secret that the Winklevoss twins (or "Winklevii," as they are reportedly nicknamed) were in the running for the Beijing squad, but their spots on the roster were not guaranteed until Friday's announcement.
Fittingly, the two will be rowing together. They'll be in the men's straight pair event, which pits heats of two-person boats (each rower has one oar) against one another for the standard distance of 2000 meters.
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