Super Bowl Ad Countdown: Where Are They Now?

As you prepare to watch some new Super Bowl ads (we hear there's a game, too -- but only if New England decides not to use the forward pass), can you remember the classics from 2000?

Probably not.

Several of the dot-coms that advertised (a/k/a blew their wad on the $2.1 million average cost of 30 seconds) were lampooned in a 2001 E*Trade commercial (above). According to SuperBowl-Ads.com, 17 coughed up "their seed money on ads, some before they'd even launched."

Among the ones that went down in flames:

• Pets.com had one of the most mute-button stimulating commercials of all time (see ad here). Is it any wonder they went from IPO to liquidation in 9 months?
• OurBeginning.com apparently spent 400% of their 1999 revenues on one ad, which was only somewhat funny (see ad here). There's still a site up, but we're not sure if it's the same ownership.
• Computer.com was mildly funny (see ad here) . The logo from the commercial doesn't match the one on the site today. Ask yourself -- did you buy anything them?
• Epidemic.com. Cute commercial. Dead website. You may remember that they wanted to pay you for spamming your friends.
• Lifeminders.com was intentionally awkward and their self-proclaimed "worst commercial on the Super Bowl" admitted that they didn't know anything about ads. Apparently their business model wasn't that great, either, despite eclipsing 10,000,000 members at one point before disappearing.

If you've got more time to kill today, the New York Times has a great feature on all the commercials since 1984, when Apple launched the ad revolution, and SuperBowl-Ads.com serves up some classics.