Every year, advertisers spend millions of dollars during the Super Bowl, only to experience outages due to traffic spikes directly after their ad airs. Last year, we held our first ever #BurstBowl, where we monitored the performance of Super Bowl advertisers’ websites during the big game.

Beforehand, we (wrongly) predicted which sites were going to crash during the Super Bowl. But, three major sites did have downtime: Coca-Cola, Acura, and Act of Valor. As game time approaches, #BurstBowl is back for 2013, as well as our predictions!

The Top 5 sites we think are most likely to crash during the 2013 Super Bowl

Update: see which sites went down in our results post here!

5. Got Milk?

On the surface, Got Milk? may not look like it would be a prime suspect to crash. However, when you dig into looking at their assets, they have a Flash file that is 1MB and takes over 4 seconds to load! Also, in the past 2 weeks, they have experienced 25 timeouts in Sau Paulo. Though none have been recorded in the U.S., it could be a sign of performance to come.

4. Universal Pictures

Last year, movie and studio websites performed the worst overall. This makes sense, as they generally all include high amounts of video and graphics. Over the past couple of weeks, the website has showcased incredibly inconsistent performance, with page load times ranging from 5 seconds to 25 seconds. With a very slow Time to Display, users may end up waiting and waiting for the page to load.

3. Doritos (Crash the Super Bowl)

Doritos came in 4th place overall last year in #BurstBowl. This year, however, looks like it may be a different story. Doritos www.crashthesuperbowl.com is directing users to a Facebook page that is taking over 13 seconds to load! Last year, Coca-Cola’s “Polar Bowl” also sent users to its Facebook page, had a similar performance, and ultimately crashed. In the end, Doritos’ Facebook page may be the biggest thing to crash in the Super Bowl.

2. The Walking Dead

The Walking Dead will make an appearance in Time Warner Cable’s advertisement slot this year. The Walking Dead website has over 250 requests and 3MB of content! Last year, Act of Valor crashed under similar circumstances. Not to mention, the website has experienced 45 outages from Washington, D.C. in the past 2 weeks (only 97% uptime). Even though it won’t be a dedicated advertisement slot, The Walking Dead website is highly vulnerable.

1. Coca-Cola

Coke had perhaps the biggest crash of all during last year’s Super Bowl. We’re calling them out this year, as we foresee history repeating itself. This year, Coke will be airing a 60-second ad that directs users to decide the ending at www.cokechase.com. The bad news is, www.cokechase.com has a page load time that lasts longer than their entire advertisements – a whopping 61 seconds! Not to mention, their main website www.coca-cola.com has had 68 outages in Miami the last 2 weeks (only 97% uptime). Overall, it could be another rough outing for Coke in the Super Bowl.

What websites do you think will crash during this year’s Super Bowl? (List of advertisers found here.) Tweet your predictions to @yottaa using #BurstBowl!

Check back here on Monday or visit www.burstbowl2013.com for the full results of this year’s #BurstBowl!