Press Room: 2003

Keynote Reports Some Super Bowl Advertisers Fumbled Their Web Sites During Game

SAN MATEO, California — January 27, 2003 — Keynote Systems (Nasdaq: KEYN), the global leader in Web performance management and testing services, reports that several Super Bowl advertisers fumbled during the championship game, unable to maintain peak Web site performance when viewers were drawn to their sites during or following Super Bowl commercials. Poor performance at some sites raises questions about whether corporations are doing proper load-testing to insure they can handle spikes following tremendous exposure during a major media event and whether or not they are doing a satisfactory job of monitoring performance to assure an optimal customer experience.

According to Keynote:

Cadillac’s Web site (www.cadillac.com) experienced significant problems around halftime of the game – availability, which had been 100% prior to the game, dropped to as low as 83% and response time tripled to more than six seconds for those users who were able to get through;
The HULK buckled under the load – just as the game was beginning, the Web site for the upcoming movie (www.thehulk.com) collapsed. Between 6 p.m. and 11 p.m. (Eastern), the site’s response time averaged more than 20 seconds. The site’s availability dropped below 90% at one point and averaged less than 95%. Prior to Super Bowl day, the site averaged around 2.5 seconds in response time and had availability of around 99%.
Today, the site is still producing poor performance – at 7 a.m. (Eastern), the site’s response time was more than six seconds. At 1:00 p.m. (Eastern), there was a 54 second response time.
The Philip Morris Web site (www.philipmorris.com) had availability of only 97% during the game. Philip Morris changed its site on January 26th at 1 p.m. (Eastern) to announce the renaming of the company to Altria Group. During this switchover, the site had availability drop to as low as 37% for a half-hour period. After the switchover, the site’s average response time went from 3-4 seconds to less than one second.

Among those advertisers whose Web sites maintained 100% availability during the Super Bowl were: FedEx (www.fedex.com), Levi Strauss (www.levi.com), McDonalds (www.mcdonalds.com), Sony (www.sony.com) and Sony Pictures (www.sonypictures.com).

“The fact that a number of Super Bowl advertiser Web sites had such significant degradations in performance indicates that they very likely had not done the appropriate kind of ‘real world’ load testing prior to the Super Bowl. The performance of these sites substantially degraded due to the traffic load generated to their site by their ad,” said Arnold Waldstein, vice president of marketing and business development for Keynote. “E-businesses must load test their sites under accurate and realistic conditions to ensure their ability to deal with ‘hit storms’ during major marketing promotions; such as the type generated by a high visibility Super Bowl ad.”

About Keynote

Keynote Systems (Nasdaq "KEYN"), The Internet Performance Authority®, is the global leader in Internet performance management services that improve the quality of e-business. Keynote’s services enable corporate enterprises to benchmark, diagnose, test and manage their e-business systems both inside and outside the firewall. Approximately 2,300 corporate IT departments and 18,000 individual subscribers rely on the company's easy-to-use and cost-effective services to optimize revenues and reduce downtime costs without requiring additional complex and costly software implementations.

Keynote Systems, Inc. was founded in 1995 and is headquartered in San Mateo, California. The company can be reached at www.keynote.com or by phone in the U.S. at 650-403-2400.

Editorial Contacts:

Erika Freed, Ruder Finn, (212) 715-1538, freede@ruderfinn.com
Dan Berkowitz, Keynote Systems, (650) 403-3305, dberkowitz@keynote.com

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