During my time at Monster I was able to actually see the results of our Super Bowl ad traffic, whether it was good or not so good. But I’ve always wondered how much Super Bowl commercials really impacted other job board’s traffic. Moreover what other initiatives they utilize to maintain the growing need for more job seeker eyeballs after the commercial has come and gone.

So I took some time, did some research and wrote a synopsis of the following job sites complete with my humble twisted opinion.

Careerbuilder’s silly Monkey commercials, during and after, the Super Bowl propelled them into a new level of market awareness in 2006, although follow-up efforts in 2007 & 2008 could not replicate their initial traffic success. Careerbuilder’s consistent traffic has been solidified by their ability to turn into a finely search optimized machine coupled with job seekers returning through daily emailed job alerts.

HotJobs ran Super Bowl commercials in January of 1999 and found their site down for days due to pushing more traffic than they could handle, not a great first showing but this marketing method was an obvious success. Nowadays it seems their ability to gain ground on CB while passing Monster is mainly due to HotJobs ability to finally skew well in Yahoo’s organic search, which I’m sure has staffers saying “It’s about D@%# time!“.

Monster hit a homerun in 1999 with their “When I Grow Up” commercial; unfortunately they have not been able to replicate the success of ‘99, after several attempts, and over the past 3 years they’ve allowed their lead to dwindle being passed by Careerbuilder, HotJobs, and now Indeed. Monster’s highest single source of traffic originates, like CB, from their daily emailed driven job search agents which are sent to job seekers daily with a link back to their saved job searches. Most job sites have this email driven resource, although none has leveraged it to the extent of Monster over the past 8 years, unfortunately their advantage in SEO, which would complement their email traffic, has been spiraling downward for years.

Indeed is the black sheep of the bunch and hasn’t purchased a Super Bowl commercial. Paul runs a smart and tight ship, although continues to steadily climb into the group of traffic leaders. How? Well Indeed receives almost 25% of their traffic from Google through extreme amounts of SEO and targeted SEM. Indeed has a few high profile partnerships, although the bulk of their eyeballs come from search.

But aren’t Super Bowl ads providing brand awareness relative to search?

Of the TOP 10 keyword terms used on search engines in the Employment and Training segment (including job boards) 3 of these terms are a variant of Monster, 3 more are variants of CareerBuilder, 2 are Indeed variants and last but never least Yahoo’s HotJobs holds NONE of the top 10 terms for search… So thanks to the black sheep, Indeed, the “You need Super Bowl ads to brand yourself on a world stage properly” myth can be MYTH BUSTED.

My closing thoughts… If you have the cash on hand to spend on a Super Bowl commercial you’re richer than most. If you choose not to buy a SB commercial and spend it strategically using more of a consistent and diversified approach, you’re smarter than most. If you choose to take the SB commercial plunge you will also need the cash to support it with many long-term traffic initiatives, and if Monster and HotJobs couldn’t sustain long-term after their SB traffic tsunami, good luck. Also remember that back in ‘99 the internet was new and more of a novelty for most, meaning everyone flocked to these first dotcom companies utilizing the Super Bowl as a marketing vehicle.

Today’s viewers are just dotcomed to death!

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