BY BRIAN MITCHELL INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY Posted 12/21/2006 Former Virginia Gov. James Gilmore added his name to the list of GOP White House hopefuls this week, saying the field lacks a real conservative capable of winning. Gilmore announced he was mulling a run in several interviews. “There is no committed conservative in this race who can put together a national campaign. I can do that,” he told the Washington Post. He brings to seven the number of Republicans...

BY PETE BARLAS

INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY

Posted 1/31/2007

A few, but just a few, technology companies plan to play on Super Bowl Sunday.

In keeping with the conservative trend that followed the dot-com crash, only five tech and telecom companies are willing to gamble millions of dollars to join the sponsor roster of this year’s big game almost always the most-watched TV show of the year.

As of Wednesday, only Hewlett-Packard, () Salesgenie.com, CareerBuilder.com, GoDaddy.com and Sprint Nextel () had agreed to suit up for Super Bowl XLI in Miami.

Some tech companies could still grab one of the few remaining time slots. Microsoft () is one, says John Bogusz, executive vice president of sports sales and marketing for CBS, which is broadcasting the game.

“We have been talking to a couple of tech guys, but we’re still talking,” he said.

Among this year’s players, HP and Salesgenie, a unit of InfoUSA, () are rookies. The other three are vets.

Times have changed. For Super Bowl XXXIV, played Jan. 30, 2000, near the peak of the Internet bubble, 17 of the 36 sponsors were tech or Internet-related companies. A few of those companies, including Pets.com and Computer.com, hadn’t yet managed to make any appreciable profits, and they’re long gone.

140 Million Viewers

Companies have to pay big to play in the big bowl. The price of a 30-second ad in the first quarter the most coveted spot costs $2.6 million.

Still, 141.4 million people worldwide tuned in to watch last year’s Super Bowl, up from 133.7 million the previous year. No other single TV broadcast carries the same clout, says Thomas Harpointer, chief executive of AIS Media, a Web marketing and e-commerce development firm.

“The Super Bowl is unique because the advertisers are getting access to an audience they may normally not have access to,” he said. “Even my wife, who is not a football fan, is going to watch the Super Bowl.”

The size of that audience is why HP will run an ad in the fourth quarter touting its computer products, says David Roman, vice president of worldwide communications for the HP personal systems group.

“The Super Bowl is so different because the commercials are almost as important as the game,” he said. “We are trying to position HP in the PC space in a much stronger way than we have done in the past.”

On Sunday, InfoUSA will be making a strong play. The marketing company bought three spots to promote Salesgenie.com, which sells sales leads online to small businesses. Salesgenie is also a co-sponsor of the pregame show. The company won’t say what it’s spending overall, but it would seem to be several million dollars at least.

Vinod Gupta, chief executive of InfoUSA, says most of the nation’s salespeople will tune in either to see the ads, the game or both.

“Our potential market is 30 million salespeople, entrepreneurs, small-business owners and executives and most of them watch the Super Bowl,” he said. “So this is a cost-effective way to reach that entire market.”

The returning tech vets are convinced the Super Bowl ads score. GoDaddy, known for its controversial ads, has paid for three 30-second spots. This is the third year at the big game for the company, which hosts Web sites and is a leading issuer of Web addresses, also called domain names.

Last year, traffic to GoDaddy’s Web site more than doubled to 4 million unique visitors in the month of February, says Nielsen/NetRatings, a research firm.

In the ensuing months, GoDaddy says its domain name market share rose to 32% from 25%.

This year the company hopes for a repeat, says CEO Bob Parsons.

“We don’t know what the impact is going to be I just think we will get a boost,” he said.

Sprint’s Content Focus

CareerBuilder, an online employment service, is also back for a third time.

In 2006, traffic to CareerBuilder’s Web site averaged 14 million visitors a month, far ahead of its nearest rival, Monster Worldwide, () which is hovering near 9 million a month, Nielsen says.

Job postings and sales are also up, says Cynthia McIntyre, CareerBuilder’s senior director of advertising. “You can’t measure it just from the Super Bowl, but we definitely have seen a lift,” she said.

Sprint Nextel is returning for the second year in a row, but at a reduced volume.

The wireless carrier will have one 30-second ad in the second quarter. A year ago, Sprint sponsored the Super Bowl halftime show and ran two ads. But this doesn’t represent a pullback, says Angie Read, a Sprint spokeswoman.

Last year, Sprint used the Super Bowl to promote its recent merger with Nextel. This year, the company is focusing not on ads but on the NFL-related services it’s bringing to its cell phone customers, including statistics and game highlights, Read says.

“The key for us this year (for the Super Bowl) is providing exclusive content about the game (for our mobile customers),” she said.

During the dot-com boom, some Internet companies were known to spend virtually their entire marketing budgets on the bowl. That’s no longer the case. CareerBuilder’s annual ad budget is $250 million. InfoUSA spends $40 million a year on marketing Salesgenie.com and its small-business group.

That’s good, says Web marketer Harpointer, who repeats the adage: If you have to ask how much it is, you can’t afford it.

“You should have enough capital to be able to afford for it to not work and still have a way of recouping that loss,” he said.

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