• by January 29, 2001

So much for television being a passive medium, incapable of inspiring people to get up off the couch and log on to the web. Nielsen//NetRatings, reports that daily traffic to SuperBowl.com at home spiked 269% on Sunday. Hour by hour traffic jumped in the fourth quarter, with 16% of all visitors logging on to vote for the game's most valuable player.

Daily traffic to the official Super Bowl site peaked on Sunday with 359,000 unique visitors as compared to 97,000 visitors the day before. Fans watching the broadcast were prompted to visit SuperBowl.com during the end of the game to vote for the MVP. Traffic during this period quadrupled as viewers logged on to the site to cast their vote.

"As the Web and TV exist as disparate forces in today's global media stage, it takes a strong call to action to transform viewers into surfers," said Allen Weiner, VP of analytical services at NetRatings. "At the start of the fourth quarter, CBS urged viewers to go to the Web to vote for the Super Bowl's Most Valuable Player. The Web's ability to give fans the opportunity to cast their cyber ballots obviously hit a nerve and sets the tone for other similar TV- to-Web interactions."

There was a dramatic shift this year in composition among advertisers as compared to last year's Super Bowl, showing a significant decrease in dot-com advertisers. This year the number of digital economy advertisers dropped 40%, while traditional brick and mortar companies surged 18%.

"This is in line with the overall advertising trends we are seeing in the marketplace, where digital economy companies are slowing down, but traditional brick and mortar advertisers are picking up the pace," added Weiner.