A great start, numerous fumbles, and a couple of less-than-marquee names grabbing the spotlight. Of course, I’m not talking about the Super Bowl game. I’m talking about the performance of advertisers in integrating their $2.6 million television ads with their landing pages and websites.

There were analogies galore between the action on the field and the action on the computer monitor. So in the spirit of cross-channel integration, here are some awards we’d like to present:

The Devin Hester Award (for getting the "game" off to a great start): Devin Hester’s kickoff return for a touchdown was an auspicious opening to the game on the field. In similar fashion, Blockbuster’s early First Quarter advertisement got the online/offline marketing game off to a great start with a textbook example of how to integrate offline and online marketing. The television ad drove people to the website, and the landing page imagery tied directly to the Super Bowl spot, and the call-to-action (a bold, "Click Here to begin your FREE TRIAL") and messaging were crystal clear. A clear, 2-step signup process followed. Although PETA was surely not happy about the mouse abuse in the television spot, in my mind, the best individual effort of the game.

The Marvin Harrison Award (for being awesome before the game, but pretty much a non-factor during the game): Marvin Harrison is a Hall-of-Fame bound wide receiver for the Colts. Yet Super Bowl XLI will not be remembered as one of his great games. The same can be said of Taco Bell. Taco Bell built a wonderful, viral online application, the Carne Asada Improv, which generated great reviews in the hype prior to the game. Yet, their Third Quarter spot was so-so, and it did not alert viewers to the great application they had on their site. It really is quite addictive. To get a taste, check out my improv: http://www.carneasadaimprov.com/watch.cfm?show=831&key=9614C52D-99FD-5002-8304919008111C5D

The Peyton Manning Award (for getting off to a slow start, but ultimately coming through): The beginning of the game for Peyton Manning was not pretty, one interception along with one very-near interception. Sprint had a similar gameday experience. After their memorable Connectile Dysfunction ad ran, the Sprint site was very slow to load (ironic given that they were promoting their broadband service), but ultimately they nicely integrated the TV message with the online message. And as the icing on the cake, they leverage a third-medium, print, with a full-page ad on the back of the USA Today’s Monday sports section to further promote the website. It is curious, however, that the Sprint homepage and the print ad mention a Free Mobile Broadband Card promotion, while this same message is not found on the landing page the ads promote (www.sprint.com/mobilebroadband).

The Rex Grossman Award (for flashes of brilliance, but generally bungling things): True to form, Rex Grossman showed flashes of brilliance, but made numerous mistakes, with 2 interceptions and a fumble. The same can be said for Bud Light. The "Rock, Paper, Scissors" ad was great, but the site is a mess. It’s understandable that their landing page requires you to verify that you are 21 before entering. But the usability of the form entry is a disaster. They require you to enter your birthdate in mm-dd-yy format EXACTLY. Stray from this at all, and you’re in trouble. Type in "6-15-1954" and you end up with "61-51-95". And absolutely no tabbing is allowed. Type "12 (tab) 17 (tab) 63" and you end up with "12-dd-17". Wonder how many people lost interest at this point? Then the ensuing page prominently promotes "TV Commercials" on the top right of the page, yet clicking on this does not lead to the Super Bowl ads. These can only be found by clicking on Bud Bowl 07 on the right. But when was there any mention of Bud Bowl? And why are they requiring you to choose a media player and bandwidth? Finally, try going to budlight.com after first visiting budweiser.com. The audio that plays at the latter site becomes cacophonous as you traverse budlight.com. With $30 million apparently invested in their Bud.TV effort, they certainly could have spent a little more on usability.

The Adam Vinatieri Award (for being automatic during the year, but not living up to standards during the Super Bowl): Adam Vinatieri, the legendary automatic Super Bowl kicker, missed an extra point and a field goal (granted, the extra point miss was not his fault). Similarly NFL.com struggled during the game. The fan-made ode to losing teams ad was great, but this usually infallible site seemed to be overwhelmed by the traffic after the spot ran. It took me 3 tries to get the site to load. Surely, auto-playing a video advertisement upon the page loading did not help the situation. In stark contrast, the NFL also won The Robbie Gould Award (for flawless execution) for its NFL Shop offline/online effort. Gould, the Bears’ kicker, was perfect in the postseason, and NFL Shop executed flawlessly as well. Within seconds of the Colts victory, the site was promoting the Colts Super Bowl Champion hats, TV Shirts, and the like. Although they gambled by including Flash on the page, I found the site to load instantaneously immediately after the television spot ran. The shopping experience itself could use a little work (a call-to-action on the category page wouldn’t hurt), but overall, a great example of how to directly target a landing page to what just transpired on-the-air.

The Prince Award (for pure spectacle): Prince gave one of the most spectacular halftime performances in memory. For pure online spectacle, the award has to go to GoDaddy. The bad boys of Super Bowl marketing leveraged their Super Bowl tie-in to the hilt, showing not only the ad that ran, but also the ads that were rejected by CBS. They do lose points though for promoting $1.99 domains during the television ad that ran, but then highlighting $8.95/year domains on the landing page, with the $1.99 offer buried below.

The Kevin Hayden Award (for coming out of nowhere and making a splash): Kevin Hayden, who was only playing as a result of an injury to another player, made a name for himself with his electrifying interception return for a touchdown that sealed the game for the Colts. Similarly, new Super Bowl advertiser, SalesGenie.com made the most of its big game appearance. They piqued interest prior to the game, by showing the first 7 seconds of their Super Bowl ad on their website, which ended in a cliffhanger (did he or didn’t he "go for a ride"). Although the rest of the ad was a letdown, the landing page had clear messaging to support the "100 Free Sales Leads" promoted on the air, a clear call-to-action, and a special "Super Bowl offer" to leverage the attention the site was surely receiving.

The Dominic Rhodes Award (for having a milestone game after a long hiatus): Colts’ running back Dominic Rhodes rushed for 113 yards, his first 100-yard game in 5 years. Similarly, Coca Cola starred in the Super Bowl this year, after sitting out the big event for the last 9 years. The television ads were epic, truly great brand advertising. The web experience wasn’t quite as good – it would have been a good idea to provide direct links to the ads from the coke.com homepage rather than requiring 5 clicks to get to them. But they did do a nice job of framing their video player with other Coke related promotions.

The Jim Sorgi Award (for benefiting from the Super Bowl without actually playing): Colts’ backup quarterback Jim Sorgi did not throw a pass all season. Yet he’s now the proud owner of a Super Bowl ring. Similarly, you’ve got to hand it to Flomax. Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals ran a Fourth Quarter ad for its prostate drug, Flomax. Many people who were interested in this drug surely pointed their browsers to the obvious place, www.flomax.com. Yet on this site, instead of learning about Benign Prostatic Hyperplasia, they instead could learn about Flomax Products, Inc. a California-based provider of valve automation services. To Flomax (the drug’s) credit, they did highlight the "4Flomax.com" URL in the television ad, and their landing page was clear and to the point. But I can’t help thinking what a banner day it must have been for Flomax Products, Inc. of Livermore, CA – Super Bowl-style traffic without spending a dime.

So there you have it. Overall, a pretty good showing by the advertisers in Super Bowl XLI, but there is still a ways to go. I’m sure 2008 will be even better. Hopefully around this time next year, we’ll not only be celebrating a New York Jets Super Bowl victory (a man can dream, can’t he?), but also an even better integration of online and offline media in the premiere sports and television event of the year.

If you want to learn more about who succeeded and fumbled in the Super Bowl online marketing game, please check out the Search Marketing Scoreboard which Optimost produced in conjunction with Reprise Media.

Ebates pioneered the online cash back shopping portal concept back in 1999. Its consumers get cash back every time they shop at over 800 brand-name stores listed on the site. New visitors to www.ebates.com are directed to an initial landing page where they are required to register with an e-mail address and password in order to gain access to the site. Ebates brought in Optimost to optimize the page and help them maximize the percentage of visitors who complete the registration process.

Optimost’s dedicated project team developed a test plan for the landing page, which included 12 variables and 72 different values (versions of variables) to be tested. Based on this plan, the Optimost solution engine quickly identified and generated over 600 million possible permutations of the page. With its advance testing methodology, Optimost was able to conduct multivariable tests on a subset of these permutations and identify a winning creative that increased registration by 58.4%.

You can access all of our customer success stories at: http://www.optimost.com/case_studies.phtml.

Q: What does orthogonality mean with respect to an experimental design?
Orthogonality is a common term that appears when describing the properties of multivariable experiments. Orthogonality is a mathematical term which is often used in algebra to describe the relationship between two sets of numbers. Experimental designs can be described as orthogonal designs because of the mathematical property that enables multiple variable effects to be estimated simultaneously.

Table 1 shows an experimental design testing three variables. Each variable, A, B and C (such as headline, image, and submit button), has two variations or values labeled as 0 and 1. Since all possible combinations are shown, the design is a full factorial, meaning every possible combination is tested (2 x 2 x 2 = 8 combinations). We also call this an "orthogonal" design. Each combination of values can be viewed as a unique web page called a creative.

Creative	A	B	C
1	0	0	0
2	0	0	1
3	0	1	0
4	0	1	1
5	1	0	0
6	1	0	1
7	1	1	0
8	1	1	1

Table 1. Full factorial orthogonal design

By examining the design matrix in Table 1, the following observations can be made:

• Each row is unique relative to any other row
• Each column is unique relative to any other column
• Each value in every column occurs an equal number of times
• Each value in one column appears with another corresponding value in another column an equal number of times

For instance, all columns contain four instances of value 0 and four instances of value 1. Also, each of the following combinations appears in exactly two creatives:

• A=0 and B=0
• A=0 and B=1
• A=1 and B=0
• A=1 and B=1

This equal balance of values produces "orthogonality" in the design. This allows us to both estimate the effects of all variables but also any interactions among variables.

Optimizing your web site is one extremely important link in the chain of marketing management. Savvy marketers also know that they need to retain an ongoing relationship with each of their customers if they are to best leverage every interaction they have with them.

The recent emergence of Enterprise Marketing Management (EMM) software holds great promise for the future of online marketing. Optimost partners with Unica, a leading EMM provider whose Affinium® software streamlines the entire marketing process, from planning and budgeting to project management, execution, and measurement.

Unica’s Affinium Suite enables marketers to identify and act on new customer insights, as well as collaborate with each other and external agencies to deliver effective initiatives on time and within budget. Affinium combines web analytic solutions with tools that allow marketers to plan resources, do modeling, and manage leads, campaigns and events. Insights gained from Affinium allow Optimost customers to identify new audience segments against which to test as well as to try various offers and content as part of that campaign management.

For more information about Unica, go to www.unica.com.

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Following up on its tremendous success in North America and Japan, Optimost has just announced the opening of its UK office in London to meet the growing demand of customers in Europe.

A growing percentage of the millions of viewers who watch the Super Bowl are focused on one thing: the commercials. The Monday after the game, you’re likely to find more coverage and critiques of the ads than you are of the actual game in many media vehicles.

Optimost and Reprise Media have joined forces to develop a unique scorecard for advertisers to assess how well they leveraged and integrated search marketing programs and landing pages with their TV commercials. In addition to the scorecard, a whitepaper that includes a detailed online marketing assessment of all the commercials will be available soon.

For more information, please check out the Super Bowl Scorecard, and go to the Scorecard information page to receive the white paper as soon as it becomes available.