Compuware Super Bowl Advertisers Site Analysis: Lights Out for a Few Top Brands
DETROIT -- Compuware Corp. (Nasdaq: CPWR) last week announced the results of its Super Bowl advertisers Web site analysis.
Super Bowl advertisers spend millions producing commercials to be seen by multi-millions of viewers. Consequently, advertiser website traffic typically spikes in conjunction with this enhanced exposure. As the industry leader in optimizing the performance of web, non-web, mobile, streaming and cloud applications, Compuware monitored advertisers' websites during the Super Bowl to gauge how each performed under increased load.
Additionally, in the spirit of Super-Bowl-caliber competition, Compuware conducted a head-to-head comparison of major brands -- based on long-standing industry rivalries -- that included Coke vs. Pepsi, Audi vs. Mercedes-Benz and Universal Pictures vs. Paramount.
While some advertisers' sites experienced minimum or no impact from the inflated traffic volumes, others suffered increased page load times and reduced availability, with a few sites crashing during the critical peak period. Over all, the brands that provided the best site performance included Go Daddy, Paramount and Lincoln.
The brands that posted the slowest page load times and whose sites were slow throughout the game included Doritos, Coca-Cola and Universal. As for the head-to-head competition, the analysis showed that Pepsi, Mercedes-Benz and Paramount beat the performance of their rivals in terms of average page load times.
"We closely monitored the sites of all of the key Super Bowl advertisers at five-minute intervals and were able to determine not only which sites performed well and which didn't, but why they performed the way they did," said Stephen Pierzchala, Technology Strategist, Compuware APM's Center of Excellence. "We were able to pinpoint causes -- from external factors like third-party services and CDN utilization, to design issues such as the use of rich media and heavy-weight plugins -- of the performance issues.
"There's a lot involved in ensuring websites perform optimally and provide visitors with an exceptional experience, because that's what users have come to expect and they can be very unforgiving when they don't get it," continued Pierzchala. "Consequently, it's now more important than ever for organizations to partner with a trusted expert like Compuware to ensure that poor website performance doesn't hurt the business."
More at www.compuware.com.
