Hey advertisers – where are you?! Today starts the event that causes a major drop in US work productivity – The NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament. Better known to some of us sports nuts as March Madness. I woke up this morning curious to see which companies and products were going to take advantage of today’s hot words – March Madness. Would a non-sports related product kick off a campaign hoping to grab the attention of sports fans? Would colleges run a campaign to draw interest in their schools? It seems to me the options are endless – but, maybe that is just me.

I started with Google and searched for ‘March Madness’. Not much interesting – the sort of results I would expect. Ticket buying and betting sites. Yawn. Tivo, the most notable of the product-related results, ran an ad near the top talking about recording two games at once. Great ad, poor follow-through. The landing page was generic with only one mention of basketball at the bottom – not even related to recording two games at once. I was hoping to see basketball graphics or game-related content.

Buried last – after clicking on the Sponsored Links text was www.coloradopen.com. Buried that low, I doubt they’ll get too many clicks, but the ad is creative. The landing page lacks basketball content, but is educational and would provide good information if I was looking for ink refills.

Next was Yahoo – again I searched on March Madness. This was a little better. There was still the usual betting and ticket sites, but sprinkled in was some campaign and related product advertising. MyCokeRewards ran an ad that said I can collect points and get March Madness rewards. The landing page talked about rewards but nothing related to basketball. Will that cause people to leave the page? I was less interested.
But, I did finally find someone advertising a product and taking advantage of March Madness. Intercontinental Buckhead Hotel in Atlanta ran an ad near the bottom on page 1 of the results. Atlanta is the home of the Final Four so they’re obviously trying to show their hotel as a destination for people coming into Atlanta for the big games. The landing page is their generic hotel description which is okay, but I thought something telling me the proximity to the arena where the games will be played would have been helpful.

I’ll be curious to see if any other advertisers pop up throughout the tournament. I was expecting to come away knowing who all of the sponsors were for the event. Maybe I tried the search too early, but this typically is the most exciting weekend. Besides exciting basketball, this will be another game to follow!