More Ad Bucks, Less Dot.Com Ads

TV viewers will see a more familiar lineup of Super Bowl advertisers Sunday than they did last year, when mostly little-known dot-coms accounted for nearly 40 percent of the commercials during the game.

Well-known brands like Volkswagen and Levi Strauss will be making their Super Bowl debuts beside veterans like Anheuser-Busch, Pepsi-Cola, Visa and FedEx when the New York Giants meet the Baltimore Ravens for the NFL championship.

Missing are 14 of last year's 17 dot-coms, such as little-known startups like Lifeminders.com, Computer.com, OnMoney.com and OurBeginning.com.

Business failures, a drubbing in the stock market and revised objectives — such as making a profit — kept many of the Web sites from coming back this year.

"It's a much more traditional list of advertisers," said CBS ad sales boss Joe Abruzzese. "People aren't going to have any trouble figuring out what every advertiser's business is."

Despite the flight of the dot-coms and a weaker overall ad market, CBS insiders say the network managed to get an average of $2.3 million for the 60 half-minute ads in the game, up 4.5 percent from the record $2.2 million average ABC claimed a year ago.

That amounts to a staggering $76,667 per second.

The Super Bowl gets the biggest TV audience of the year. Upward of 120 million people tune in to watch at least part of the game.

Three dot-coms are back from last year: online broker ETrade and job sites Monster.com and Hotjobs.com. But CBS said dot-coms collectively account for only about 10 percent of the 30 minutes of in-game ads this year.

St. Louis-based Anheuser-Busch is the single biggest advertiser on the Super Bowl this year with four minutes of ads for Budweiser and Bud Light. Its ads feature an everyman named Cedric, a mouse helping a Clydesdale and the musical group 'N SYNC.

Pepsi-Cola Co. has three Super Bowl minutes and plans to push its flagship brand with the theme "Joy of Pepsi" replacing the 2-year-old "Joy of Cola." Hallie Eisenberg, the young actress in past "Joy ads, won't appear in the Super Bowl ads.

Levi Strauss & Co., the clothes maker from San Francisco, pitches a new line of jeans with an odd ad in which medics strip the pants from an unconscious donor and rush them via helicopter to a forlorn man elated to get the worn duds.

Electronic Data Systems Corp., the technology consultant from Plano, Texas, is back with a sequel to its "Cat Herders" ad. This time, people are running ahead of a stampede through a sleepy Spanish town but the animals are squirrels not bulls. EDS says the ad aims to suggest it can help businesses stay ahead of the pack.

MasterCard International returns after skipping last year's Super Bowl and has two new ads in its "Priceless" campaign. Accenture, the new name for the business adviser formerly known as Andersen Consulting, and Cingular Wireless, a new mobile phone venture, make their Super Bowl ad debuts.