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Traffic Spikes for Hyundai, Paramount, GoDaddy on Super Bowl Sunday

Advertisers Hyundai, Paramount, and GoDaddy.com were the big winners of Super Bowl XLII, in that they had the largest increases - ranging from 600% to more than 1400% - in market share of visits to their websites on February 3, according to a Hitwise analysis.

Advertisements that included a URL succeeded in driving traffic, Hitwise said. The number of site visitors to Coca-Cola.com and Pepsi.com, which promoted only the Pepsi Stuff campaign with a URL, increased 33% and 76%, respectively, from the previous day.

Some that did not feature URLs still received a traffic boost due to the strength of their brand and popularity of some of the ads, such as Anheuser-Busch’s Budlight.com (up 100%) and Budweiser.com (up 25%).

“Advertisers have learned that they can rely on the buzz about Super Bowl advertisements to help drive repeated viewing of the commercials, but those who failed to include and barely featured their URLs lost an opportunity for consumers to actively engage with their brand,” said Heather Dougherty, director of research, Hitwise.

“Everyone should seek to maximize the investment through an integrated marketing campaign that includes the online elements such as websites, search results, and social media.”

Super Bowl ads were not effective for all companies. Traffic to some websites tanked on both Sunday and Monday:

• Disney (-17%, -34%)
• Taco Bell (-20%, -25%)
• 20th Century Fox’s Jumper (-50%, -50%)

Traffic to other sites, like those of Victoria’s Secret , FedEx, Sunsilk (lifecantwait.com) and E*Trade Financial, decreased on Sunday but spiked on Monday.