The Super Bowl 2001 will not see the dotcom ad orgy of last year - mainly because many of the outfits that splashed out on the event have become dotcom dodos in the interim.

Just three dotcoms have so far coughed up the necessary $2.5 million for one of the 30-second spots on CBS in this month's football fest - E-Trade, jobs sites Monster.com (going for its Super Bowl ad hat-trick this year) and Hotjobs.com. E-Trade is going all out - it is sponsoring the Super Bowl XXXV half-time show for the second consecutive year, while all 66,321 audience bottoms in the stadium will be resting on cushions emblazoned with the financial site's logo.

Other dotcoms have not been so lucky - of the 17 technology or Internet companies that bought ad space for Super Bowl XXXIV, seven have gone out of business. These include Pets.com and Computers.com.

Meanwhile, some survivors have spurned the January 28 sporting extravaganza in favour of spreading their advertising money around other sporting events - Autotrader.com will not be repeating the Super Bowl ads this year, but will have TV ads during basketball games.

"The Super Bowl tripled our site traffic and really gave what was a brand associated with a print product a big boost," Clark Wood, Autotrader VP marketing told The Industry Standard. "But to spend money on the Super Bowl this year would be a huge waste of money." ®

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