Gawker: valleywag, super bowl

Comcast Porn Goof Gives Super Bowl Viewers an Eyeful

Owen Thomas — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 11:50:52 EST

Everyone's pretending to be shocked about the 10-second clip of porn spliced into Comcast's Tucson-area broadcast of the Super Bowl. Why? That's how Comcast butters its bread.

The clip (do we even need to mention that it's NSFW?) from ClubJenna, apparently meant to broadcast on the Shorteez channel but instead spliced into KVOA's feed of the football game, is but one of the many porn channels from which Comcast makes a healthy profit. Across the industry, porn accounts for more than a quarter of pay-per-view revenues. Cue a round of handwringing among the media. Comcast customers have better purposes for their hands.

Defying online-ad supremacists, Super Bowl most lucrative ever

Jordan Golson — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 17:18:08 EST

So much for the death of television. 97.5 million people, a Super Bowl record, watched my beloved New England Patriots lose to the New York Giants, according to Fox. 107.5 million people watched the last half-hour of the game, besting the 106 million that watched the final episode of M.A.S.H. Television advertisers, who paid $2.7 million for each 30-second spot, definitely got their money's worth. Altogether, they spent $156 million on the five-hour game. It takes Google three days to make that much money.

Adding insult to injury, the TV ads did an excellent job of driving traffic online — the usual reason why one buys Web ads. MySpace's Super Bowl ads page has received 14.5 million views as of this afternoon, and GoDaddy.com received 1.5 million views during the game by viewers looking for the ad that didn't make it past Fox's censors.

As for my Patriots? There's always next year — and pitchers and catchers report February 14.

Gizmodo Super Bowl XLII Tech Commercial Awards

Mark Wilson — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 10:00:15 EST

This year was a pretty incredible Super Bowl (especially after last year when one Giz staffer's hometown Bears lost). And while the most exciting 30 seconds this year were definitely late in the fourth quarter, the commercials, as always, held their own competition to captivate the audience. Here are our favorite tech-oriented spots from the night, designated with some awards that we pretty much made up after polishing off a sixer.

Best Product Placement - Iron Man
The Iron Man movie looks better with every second we see. But did the product placement pass you by? Keep your eyes peeled in the garage scene—Iron Man drives a Tesla Roadster. It's a nice car...but the guy can fly.

Best Lost Cause - HD DVD
This lame commercial plugging "what you watch after the game" was tossed in at the last moment. It's not even worth watching again, but here it is anyway.

Best High Concept - Audi R8 (Old Luxury)
Taking a lesson from The Godfather, a man wakes with an old (Bentley?) front end in his bed. Blood has been replaced with oil, and our longing with the R8.
Audi R8 Luxury Sports Car Super Bowl Commercial Ad

Best Laugh - ETrade.com (Clown Version Sequel)
The first baby stockbroker we met was kinda lame. But then we realized that the first ETrade commercial of the night was just a setup for a great payoff.
ETrade.com

Worst Punchline - Garmin
Little car, little military leader, little horse...and what about the GPS? Is it little or something?

Best Non-Commercial Commercial Moment - Football Terminated
You know that stupid Fox robo football player they've had for a few years as part of their graphics package? On three occasions, the Terminator came in and beat the shit out of him. And damn, it was fulfilling.

Strangest Cross Branding - Ford (regional commercial)
Ford pitches you a Fusion with a free iPhone...to use with Sync...a Microsoft product. And they use an iPod touch commercial style. Very weird. (And note: if this commercial existed before tonight, we're sorry. We use something called 'DVR' so we're a bit out of touch.)

Best Adolescent Humor - AMP Energy
There were sparking nipple clamps, I mean, c'mon.
Amp Energy

Lowest Kick To Disney's Balls - CareerBuilder.com (Follow Your Heart)
Singing crickets just don't have it as easy as they used to.
Career Builder Superbowl Commercial: Follow Your Heart

Best Overall Commercial - FedEx Pigeons
The fisheye POV shot from the carrier pigeon's enhanced eyewear sealed the deal. But GPS and nightvision can only do so much when you're a pigeon.
Fedex Super Bowl Ad: Carrier Pigeons Bad Choice for Shipping

Amazon and Pepsi to pair up for music giveaway

Jordan Golson — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 19:19:47 EST

Amazon.com and Pepsi have teamed up for a year-long free music promotion, very similar to one Apple and Pepsi had several years ago. The promotion, scheduled for a Super Bowl launch, will have consumers collecting five Pepsi bottle caps for one free music track from Amazon. In short, Amazon is making a major play against iTunes. The Super Bowl is the highest-profile advertising venue in the world, and Amazon will get tons of attention from the Pepsi promotion. For free music, plenty of people will take advantage of the promo — but will they stick around to buy music when it's finished?

Amazon has captured 3 percent of the digital download market since its music download store launched to little fanfare in September. The store did force Apple to drop the prices on its DRM-free music to the standard 99 cents, but it's had little impact besides that. Amazon certainly has the name recognition to make a store work, but with iTunes and the iPod so overwhelmingly in control of the music player market, it will be a tough sell to get the average iPod owner to download a song from Amazon, copy it into iTunes and then load it on his iPod. Three steps to get a song versus one step with iTunes? Apple actually licensed Amazon's 1-Click technology for the iTunes Store. Too bad Jeff Bezos has forgotten what he taught Steve Jobs.

Super Bowl ad slots are 90 percent sold

Jordan Golson — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 20:11:27 EDT

At $2.7 million per 30-second spot, TV advertising is far from dead, or in need of help from Google. In fact, Fox is likely to bring in more than $160 million in ad revenues during the Super Bowl. That's more than Facebook is projected to make this entire year. AdAge reports that 90 percent of the 30-second ad slots for Super Bowl XLII are sold out. Normally, a few spots are still available for gullible dotcoms at the runup to the event, but not this year. Demand from automakers and movie studios has driven the buying spree. This year, Fox is showing the Super Bowl in the U.S. and is doing extensive cross-promotion with fellow News Corp. subsidiary MySpace. On-air promotions will "urge" viewers to log onto MySpace, and advertisers will tie special offers to users who also view the ads online.