The Super Bowl has come and gone and along with it the annual GoDaddy Super Bowl spot.  This year’s ad features three dudes watching racer Danica Patrick shower with another woman.  The notorious tradition started with GoDaddy’s first-ever Super Bowl ad in 2005 that parodied the infamous “wardrobe malfunction.”

GoDaddy is supposedly a Domain Name Registrar, a B2B play since the vast majority of Domain Names are registered by businesses.  So why chose a B2C medium like Super Bowl ads?  A closer look reveals that most registrants are SMBs who rely on in-house or independent web designers.  These web designers are in fact intermediaries that register the bulk of Domain names and they generally have free rein selecting a Domain Name Registrar.  As it happens these intermediaries are overwhelmingly aged 18-34 and male – the same demographic that beer ads target.

If you are beginning to suspect some method behind the madness, consider this:  Internet analysis firm Netcraft says GoDaddy’s 2005 campaign played a key role in driving GoDaddy to become the world’s largest web hosting firm.  In the 12 months after the first Super Bowl commercial, GoDaddy grew 136 percent, surpassing 1&1 Internet as the world’s largest web host.  All this despite the fact that most of their customers think of GoDaddy as a Domain Name Registrar, not a Web Hosting company.

In 2006 Go Daddy filed an S-1 registration statement prior to an initial public offering.  The IPO was withdrawn a few months later but the S-1 filing revealed that GoDaddy made $30 for every Domain Name registered.  Pretty good when GoDaddy registers most Domain Names for just $10.  Their site is designed to bombard a Registrant with multiple offers for services, including web hosting.

Is GoDaddy just a bunch of dudes singing to their own vulgar tune or are they clever marketers with a deep understanding of their customer’s psychographic?  You decide.