Save The Money: Groupon’s Super Bowl Ads May Spark Faux Outrage | Hacker News Reader

Save The Money: Groupon’s Super Bowl Ads May Spark Faux Outrage

techcrunch.com

12 pointsMcKittrick17 comments

When was the last time a web startup bought a super bowl ad slot? It seems to have been right before the bubble. Or maybe the pets.com ad was just so memorable--for the wrong reasons.

This is one of the greatest web startup super bowl commercials of all time, and it was run in 2002 which was pretty much the worst of the trough:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lH39xjXaLW8

(It's the Computer Associates 'amnesia' slot where the guy walks into the filing cabinet and blacks out right before the big meeting.)

Well, they're already bigger than Godaddy.com and preparing for IPO at 15 billion this year so it isn't that strange.

Sure, nothing against groupon.

Plenty of web startups buy Super Bowl ads. Go Daddy, CareerBuilder, Cars.com, Overstock.com, Monster.com, Priceline.com, and Hulu all come to mind.

Thanks. Except, I'm not sure Hulu qualifies as a web startup since it's a joint venture by NBC et al. I see CareerBuilder is owned by Garnett and others, too. I just watched a salesforce/chatter ad, but again, no longer startups as they are public. Just curious.

I don't know, it seemed that those companies weren't making huge amounts of money.

Though I've admired the Groupon humor in their emails and PR, these ads just didn't seem funny...not sure what taste it leaves in the mouth...

The best advertisements are ones you don't need sound to understand what's going on.

I.E. anyone can understand

Wait, both Groupon AND LivingSocial are running Super Bowl ads? Can we declare this a bubble yet? PLEASE?

How can it be a bubble? Their money isn't based on investments that hope for future earnings, but from their own yearly, insane profits.

If the group coupon concept is a fad but valued by investors as something more, than the concept is a bubble.

Why the downvote? Companies are priced based on potential earnings as well as actual earnings. For example, the potential earnings of collateralized mortgages were thought to be high, so the companies that owned them were priced to account for that. When it turned out that owning CMOs was a bad business model, the companies' market values dropped, costing investors money. And, there is no difference between people stopping mortgage payments and people stopping coupon purchases when it comes to earnings projections.

They can afford to pay for the ads out of the profit they're making.

Assuming the various established UK price comparison sites aren't all wasting their money saturating TV advertising schedules, TV advertising is actually pretty good at grabbing the attention of the not especially tech savvy bargain hunter.

Moreover, even if SuperBowl ads aren't good at getting consumers to start spending money through them, it's a very high-profile way of showing their ability to reach a much wider audience to the businesses they partner with. They're the type of companies for which brand advertising makes perfect sense.

Love them. Witty, memorable, and most importantly - they get the point across without being in your face.

love these. anyone know who made them?

Crispin Porter + Bogusky

http://cpbgroup.com/

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