Leaked Superbowl Commercials Cars.com & Under Armor

New Super Bowl Ads seem to be trickling out before the game, this first one is from Cars.com, and was posted on the Associated Press site.

Sneak Peek: Cars.com Super Bowl ad

There are also about a half-dozen movies being advertised during the game, all of which already have movie trailers available online - a couple from Sony Pictures (Zohan and Hancock), one from Disney (Wall-E), New Line Cinema (Semi-Pro), Paramount Pictures (Iron Man) Universal Pictures (unannounced) and Warner Bros.(unannounced). Fox (unannounced what they will use their time for) is a named advertiser, but that time is likely to be broken up into separate promotions for American Idol, House, 24, The Simpsons, Prison Break, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles and multiple TV shows. It could be that they will promote the Eva Longoria movie "Over Her Dead Body" but we'll have to wait to see there.

Meanwhile, heres an MSNBC news clip on what we can expect from a new Superbowl Advertiser, Under Armor, plus commentary on making of that Silent Pepsi ad discussed here previously, as well as the now nearly obligatory GoDaddy commercial preview and commentary:

GoDaddy 2008 Superbowl Commercials Revealed

GoDaddy CEO Bob Parsons has revealed, on his "Hot Points" blog, that after 10 submitted spots were rejected by Fox Network, the network has approved and agreed to air the new 2008 Superbowl Ads starring Danica Patrick in a commericial he calls "Spot On" in an apparent reference to all the rejected spots which are "off" because they were rejected. In previous years, they've shown rejected Superbowl ads on the GoDaddy web site and will follow suit this year with those 10 ads rejected before this one was finally approved.

Although it's apparently a cleaner version than he'll show on the GoDaddy website on Superbowl Sunday. The ad very wisely encourages viewers to go to the GoDaddy Web site for more, while showing a "Viewer Discretion Advised" disclaimer on the bottom of the screen to warn off those who might be offended. The broadcast version is pretty tame though:

Parsons also refers in his blog post to a second approved spot called "White Light" with the star of their 2005 and 2006 commercials, GoDaddy Girl Candice Michelle, which he claims they will be attempting to purchase a second slot for - assuming anyone pulls their ads last minute next week. There is a introductory "Teaser" to that seductive ad on the site already.

GoDaddy 2008 Superbowl Commercial Controversy

Here's a video from the Fox Business Channel with an interview of Bob Parsons of GoDaddy.com discussing their plans for a Superbowl Commercial this year and the controversy that always surrounds those ads.

Do Superbowl Commercials work? Well here's one success story - GoDaddy.com apparently increased market share by 9% following the first Superbowl commercial they aired during the 2005 game to move from 16% to 25% in a week (can total market share be deterined week-by-week?). While that seems pretty substantial, they apparently moved up 11% the following two years until they ran a Superbowl commercial in February of 2007 at the Miami Superbowl and increased to 36%.

That seems like great growth, but can it be tied directly to the ads run during the game? In any case, they claim current domain name market share to be up another 6% to 42% as can be seen in the screenshot graphic below from the FoxBusiness "America's Nightly Scoreboard" report from December. (Shown above in its' entirety in streaming form)

2005 Super bowl, 2007 Superbowl, GoDaddy.com Market Share