At Sapha, we work hard to increase your website’s conversion rates. So when it comes to evaluating ad campaigns, our main (but not sole) criteria is how well they get people talking about a product or service, deliver a clear call to actions, and turn eyeballs into customers.

And since the Super Bowl is the time most companies launch expensive advertising campaigns, there’s no better time to see how well their ads were focused on increasing the number of leads or customers in their sales pipeline.

This year’s winners.

Denny’s–The FREE Grand Slam is back-as long as the chickens produce the eggs. If Denny’s is packed on Tuesday their ad and promotion qualify as a smashing success. Let’s just hope all Denny’s franchises agree to uphold their end of the agreement this time. (Watch the ad here.)

Dockers–Can’t say it was fun to watch a group of guys walk around without pants, but they did encourage viewers to go win a free pair of Dockers on their website. Let’s see how many people give up their name and email address to become part of Dockers’ marketing machine for a chance to win free pants. (Watch the ad here.)

Tim Tebow/Focus on the Family–The controversial anti-abortion ad turned out to be nothing of the sort. In the end Tebow’s family and Focus on the Family got weeks of free press and millions in free advertising leading up to the game. And for those who want to know more, there was a clear call to action at the end. (Watch the ad here.)

Honorable Mention

Brett Farve/Hyundai–Using Farve was good as it fit in nicely with the Super Bowl audeince and made fun of something they’d understand. Also a nice way to tie in their 10-year warranty. The problem? No clear call to action where they could learn more. (Watch the ad here.)

Maybe the New York Times should rethink its strategy to charge readers for access to its website starting in 2011.

Newsday, put up a pay wall on its website back in October.

The result?

Only 35 subscribers have paid $5 a week, or $260 a year, to get unfettered access to its website newsday.com.

I hate to sound like a broken record, but in order to charge people for access, you have to  have  exclusive content that people find valuable enough to pay for.

That means editors and publishers need to do their homework and find out what parts of your site (if any) visitors are willing to pay for.

If they’re not willing to pay for it then you need to 1) get as many eyeballs to their site as possible (this means having good content) 2) sell online ads, and 3) make sure those ads are placed right creative enough that people will notice them and 4) use online conversion tools to convert as many of those visitors into leads for your customers.

If you can supply advertisers with a steady stream of leads and customers to their website, you can become very profitable.

Once newspapers figure this out, they’ll stop hemorrhaging red ink.

Are Super Bowl ads worth the price? After two decades of advertising during the big game, Pepsi no longer things so.

Pepsi, which has spent an estimated $254.2 million in Super Bowl ads over the past 20 years, startled the industry a few weeks ago by announcing the cola for the next generation won’t participate in America’s national football marketing extravaganza. Instead, the soft drink company will pour millions of dollars into an online project meant to build connections over time by reaching consumers through blogging, Facebook and Twitter. It plans to distribute more than $20 million in community grants, voted on by Web users.

Pepsi’s doing the right thing. 

While Super Bowl ads can be a great way to launch a new product, service, or get your company’s name out there, they’re also very risky. Unless you have the commercial that everyone’s talking about after the game and can clearly explain your product combined with a great call to action in 30 seconds or less, there’s no guarantee you’ll see a positive ROI from your ad spend. Conversions, after all, are the name of the game.

Pepsi already has name and product recognition-something Super Bowl ads can help promote. What they need is more people drinking their products and telling their friends and neighbors how good those products are.

By funneling their money into online marketing efforts, not only will Pepsi be able to connect with its customers and better determine the ROI from their ad spend.

It remains to be seen how successful Pepsi finds its online marketing efforts. But given how online adverting is becoming more targeted and companies are finding ways to funnel people into their sales pipeline, Pepsi made the right decision.

I’d hate to be in the newspaper business. Most papers are losing money. Many marquee ones are closing. Jobs are being cut right and left.

This isn’t new. The bleeding has been going on for at last decade. It’s just in the last few years that it’s gone from requiring stitches to a tourniquet in order to stop the hemorrhaging.

What’s amazing is that despite all red ink and layoffs, most newspapers haven’t been able to come up with a way to stop losing subscribers and become profitable.

The problem is simple: readers have become accustomed to free, online news and newspapers are adverse to charging them. And no one has found a way to keep these free sites profitable. (The notable exception to this is the Wall Street Journal who charges to access most, but not all, of its online content.)

This may chance now that the granddaddy of the newspaper business, The New York Times, had announced it might start charging for news. According to New York magazine:

After a year of sometimes fraught debate inside the paper, the choice for some time has been between a Wall Street Journal-type pay wall and the metered system adopted by the Financial Times, in which readers can sample a certain number of free articles before being asked to subscribe. The Times seems to have settled on the metered system.

The Times is smart to adopt some kind of pay strategy. Businesses can only bleed money for so long before they die.

But even charging readers for comments is no guarantee of success. As the article points out:

What makes the decision so agonizing for [New York Times Chairman Arthur] Sulzberger [Jr.] is that it involves not just business considerations, but ultimately a self-assessment of just what Times journalism is worth to the world.

In the end, every business has to prove its value. Newspapers are no different. If no one is willing to pay for what you have to offer, it’s time to change your offering or close the doors.

My question for the Times’ decision makers is how much they’ve examined the analytics data on their website to see if there are sections people would pay for and others that are best left free. (The Wall Street Journal, for example, has free access to its Opinion Pieces and a few select articles.) Some content might be worth charging while other content might be able to support itself using a web advertising model. 

Not everyone reads every part of a newspaper. Business readers might be more inclined to pay for content while stay-at-home moms may not have the means to access parts of the paper that, if it has enough targeted viewers, could pay for itself with online advertising. It’s an idea worth exploring so long as their websites can give them accurate analytics data. 

Whatever they do, it’s obvious that for most newspapers the free model isn’t working. To survive they’re going to have to find a way to keep the money flowing. The real question for the Times is whether they have content that people are willing to pay for and, if not, can they change their content quickly enough so that people will care.

In this recession, a debate had raged whether or not organizations should cut their marketing and advertising budget during lean times. According to a New Yorker article, numerous studies have shown that those who keep spending during tough times do better in the long run.

In 1927, the economist Roland Vaile found that firms that kept ad spending stable or increased it during the recession of 1921-22 saw their sales hold up significantly better than those which didn’t. A study of advertising during the 1981-82 recession found that sales at firms that increased advertising or held steady grew precipitously in the next three years, compared with only slight increases at firms that had slashed their budgets. And a McKinsey study of the 1990-91 recession found that companies that remained market leaders or became serious challengers during the downturn had increased their acquisition, R. & D., and ad budgets, while companies at the bottom of the pile had reduced them.

The best part?

…the benefits from recession investment are often surprisingly long-lived, with companies maintaining their gains in market share and sales well into economic recovery.

You can read the entire article here. In the meantime, start cranking up the marketing budgets!

In case you haven’t heard, McDonalds launched an espresso ad campaign in Starbucks’ home turf that is taking on the coffee giant.

Billboards across western Washington State read “four bucks is dumb” then mention McDonalds is now serving espressos.

I think the ad camping is brilliant for three reasons.

First it drives home a message of getting the same or better product for less money – perfect for these challenging economic times we find ourselves in. McDonald’s isn’t saying do without, they’re simply saying pay less for it.

Second, it’s the perfect billboard message. When you have about three seconds to capture someone’s attention while they’re driving, McDonalds got their message across and leaves the reader a little bit more to chew on as the drive down the road.

Third, the ads are so good, they’re getting national publicity and driving home McDonald’s message beyond western Washington.

Give the person or persons who came up with that campaign a bonus. McDonald’s is certainly getting a lot of mileage out of it.