Super Bowl 50 Ads Reimagined Through a New Top-Level Domain Filter

Marketers and advertisers across the world pay close attention to Super Bowl ads, for good reason.

By Lori Anne Wardi
Vice President – Business Development, Neustar

At a cost of up to $5 million for a 30-second spot, Super Bowl ads represent the world’s biggest stage for high-reach, large-impact marketing. The best practices seen on Sunday will set the standard across the industry and influence marketing behavior around the world. 

The call to action used in any Super Bowl spot can make or break the investment. According to MarketingLand, domain names were prominently featured in 35% of the ads, second only to hashtags. This is a testament to the important role that domain names continue to play in the overall marketing mix — even with the popularity of social media, apps and search.

While marketers drive conversations and engagement on social with hashtags, a brand’s website remains a vital point of interaction with consumers.

Domain Name Innovation

One way domain names are increasingly relevant to marketers is the emerging opportunity for shorter, more meaningful naming options via the introduction of new Top-Level Domains. New naming options open up a whole new world of creativity and availability, while offering the ability to more closely target specific audiences with the benefit of increased consumer recall. 

Top-Level Domains made their Super Bowl debut this past Sunday with the movie trailer for “Gods of Egypt.” The ad directed viewers to the memorable web address: www.godsofegypt.movie.

While “Gods of Egypt” was the only “not-com” domain name to be featured at the big game, it got me thinking about what “might have been” if some of the other brands had tapped into more creative domain naming options.

Here are just a few Super Bowl domain names “reimagined” through a new Top-Level Domain filter.

SunTrust
What aired: www.onup.com
Alternative: www.financial.security

Campaign domain names can be a creative way for brands to champion a cause and SunTrust has done a great job of building a terrific marketing campaign around the domain name, www.onup.com. While there is nothing inherently bad about this domain name, the availability of new Top-Level Domains open up opportunities for marketers to add greater meaning and relevance to the right of the dot, which can work well for campaign domain names tied to specific industries or causes. For the onup campaign, I really love the domain financial.security. It gets right to the heart of the matter in a simple, memorable way. 

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
What aired: www.teenagemutantninjaturtlesmovie.com
Alternative: www.tmnt.film

The next installment of the “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” screened an ad with one of the longest domain names you will ever see. Clocking in at a whopping 36 characters, it’s pretty hard on the eyes! 

Film studios have long faced the challenge of domain name availability, with investors snapping up the domain names of future films well before they are ready to be released. However, there is now a new Top-Level Domain solution with the team from Motion Picture Domain Registry positioning their .film namespace as the trusted and exclusive space online for blockbuster films.

So instead of a long, hard to spell and easy to forget domain name, why not make it easy for Ninja Turtle fans to quickly and easily find what they are looking for? Tmnt.film would have done the job nicely.

The suggestions above are just my thoughts on how these brands could add some new Top-Level Domain creativity to their Super Bowl call to action. With hundreds of new naming choices now available, there are countless possibilities for marketers to innovate with domain names. 

Have you got a creative domain name suggestion you’d like to add to the mix? Did you see another Super Bowl ad domain name or hashtag that could be improved with a new Top-Level Domain? Share your thoughts in the comments or via Twitter: @NeustarTLDs.

GoDaddy acquired Neustar's registry business as of August 3, 2020.