When I saw the GoDaddy Superbowl ads I thought, Oh GoDaddy. There you go again. It was so typical and expected of them, I couldn’t even bring myself to be offended. But I did wonder, was it really working? Sure, an ad with two naked women in a shower that ends with a message to check out the web site to see how the scene ends would drive traffic to the site, but would it be qualified traffic? Would any of the video seekers actually register domains and start web sites?

Apparently so. GoDaddy said they gained a “record number of new customers and total orders” from the ads, a 110% increase over last year’s Superbowl.

Clearly, the ads drove people to search. [godaddy] was the #3 hot trends by game’s end and remained at #21 hours later.

TV ads inspire searches and as long as you can be found for what people are searching for, those searches can inspire clicks. And those clicks lead to purchases. It’s a formula that works.

GoDaddy was smart to stay focused on their brand name, which they already ranked #1 for, rather than send viewers to a microsite devoted to the Superbowl videos.

As Wired points out, the ads themselves didn’t work for everyone. But their use of online video integrated with an offline campaign and easy discoverability in search can definitely work for most businesses, even when they choose a subject matter a little less likely to lead to boycotts.