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] [2] 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. 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", and it is often used as a high-water mark for the dot-com bubble.[3] [4] [5] Of these companies, four are still active, five were bought by other companies, and the remaining five are defunct or of unknown status.
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. 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. 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.[6]
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,[7] [8] and nicknamed the 2022 game the "Crypto Bowl".[9] [10] 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.[11]
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[12] | "I Need a Car" | Active | |
| Computer.com | "Mike and Mike"[13] | Purchased by Office Depot in 2000 | |
| e1040.com | "Charity" | Defunct; parent company Gilman Ciocia merged with National Holdings Corporation in 2013[14] | |
| Epidemic.com | "Bathroom" | Defunct in 2000 | |
| E-Stamp.com | "Time Saving Tips" | Defunct; domain name redirects to Stamps.com | |
| HotJobs.com | "Negotiations" | Bought by Yahoo! in 2002, later purchased and liquidated by Monster.com in 2010 | |
| LastMinuteTravel.com[15] | "Tornado" | Active; merged with Tourico Holidays in 2004,[16] which itself was acquired by Hotelbeds Group in 2017[17] | |
| LifeMinders.com | "The Worst Commercial" | Purchased by Cross Media Group in 2001[18] | |
| Monster.com | "The Road Less Travelled" | Active; acquired by Randstad NV in 2016 | |
| OnMoney.com[19] | "Paper Monster" | Defunct in 2002 | |
| Netpliance | "Webhead" | Rebranded as TippingPoint in 2002, purchased by 3Com in 2005 | |
| OurBeginning.com[20] [21] | "Invites" | Purchased by an undisclosed company in 2002 | |
| Pets.com | "If You Leave Me Now" | Defunct in 2000, Liquidated in 2001; redirects to PetSmart's website | |
| WebMD | "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 | "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[22] | ||
| Kforce | Active | |||
| MicroStrategy | "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" | 0:30 each | Purchased by Office Depot in 2000 | |
| OurBeginning.com | "Untitled 1", "Untitled 2", "Untitled 3" | 0:30 each | Purchased by an undisclosed company in 2002 |