Football Fans Take Note: Super Bowl Ads Racier

Jan. 22, 2012 SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. -- If the Super Bowl's sexiest advertising has an epicenter, this is it.

That's because GoDaddy.com, the godfather of sultry if not tacky Super Bowl spots, is headquartered here. The domain name registrar let a USA TODAY reporter inside its fortress-like headquarters as it shot one of its two 2012 Super Bowl commercials. Its new, multimillion-dollar production studio is buzzing this day with sights and sounds aimed to tease, titillate — and taunt.

Here's Danica Patrick, arguably as famous for her GoDaddy spots as for her race car driving, standing on the set in 4½-inch stilettos. Here, too, is Jillian Michaels, the shapely fitness guru and official GoDaddy Girl. She's helping Patrick strategically apply body paint to what will appear, in the ad, to be a nude model.

Sexy ads are slinking back to the Super Bowl. At stake: the eyeballs of more than 100 million Super Bowl viewers. And the urgent need to drive all of them online to find out more, socialize and tweet with friends and ultimately buy that beer, smartphone or luxury car. Thirty-some advertisers will spend upwards of $230 million just for the airtime to fight for attention in the Feb. 5 game. But that only partly explains why sexual imagery in Super Bowl advertising is becoming about as common as sand in the Sahara.

"We are in a very weird moment in time, with daughters of feminists taking pole-dancing lessons," offers Barbara Lippert, former Adweek ad critic and now pop-culture guru at ad agency Goodby Silverstein & Partners. "Everyone is looking for fantasy, because reality is so cruel."

Perhaps, then, it's only appropriate that the ultimate football game would beget this ultimate fantasy commercial: a gorgeous, GoDaddy model who appears to be in the buff. Bob Parsons, GoDaddy's controversial but confident founder, has a simple explanation: "Sex sells on the Super Bowl."

Or does it?

Studies show sexy is risky

Not according to the research gurus at University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, who have been analyzing Super Bowl ads for more than two decades. They've found that spots with sexual imagery take a 10% hit in "likability" vs. ads without racy images.

"As a basis of comparison, imagine if you were a comedian and you knew your audience felt sexy jokes were 10% less funny than regular jokes," says Chuck Tomkovick, the marketing professor who oversees the study. "You'd tell them very judiciously." That analysis was based on years of results from USA TODAY's Ad Meter, a consumer panel that electronically rates Super Bowl ads moment-by-moment as they air.

While some of the biggest Super Bowl advertisers have spent millions on ads that exude sexual imagery, most viewers actually prefer to see ads with kids or animals. "The more you put sex in an ad, the less it is liked," Tomkovick says. "It's like using Botox but not having it work out."

Don't tell that to advertisers. There are signs that they, and society, have moved beyond the societal prudishness that followed Janet Jackson's 2004 Super Bowl halftime "wardrobe malfunction" that bared her breast for the world to see. Sexy Super Bowl spots are back.

GoDaddy's second spot even features a rebirth of the group Pussycat Dolls, whose members dress more like exotic dancers than pop singers.

Beyond GoDaddy's ads, sexy model Adriana Lima will appear scantily clad in a Kia spot, and also in an ad for another Super Bowl advertiser that won't discuss it yet.