Every February, millions of football fans around the U.S. and world eagerly gather around the T.V. to watch the NFL championship, the Super Bowl. While the big game alone is watched by millions and continues to set record numbers in viewership (124.9 million views this year), another component of the Super Bowl are the breaks in between the action, the advertisements. While ads during a game are usually not newsworthy or paid much interest to, the pesky and same old commercials that typically signal a restroom break for fans goes out the window when it comes to the Super Bowl. Just like the game, these ads are elevated for the big stage in both quality and stakes.
Super Bowl ads have long been prevalent since the first Super Bowl back in 1967. The popularity of both the game and ads have only grown as opportunities to make more money during the Super Bowl increased and companies wanted to capitalize on the viewership increase. Due to the mass audience watching the game, the price for companies to feature an ad during commercial breaks has skyrocketed over time.
For context, in the first Super Bowl, a 30 second ad cost $37,500, which was still a decent amount of money back then, but compared to the massive $10 million price tag for Super Bowl LX today, it is evident that a spot in the Super Bowl spotlight is not cheap. As a result of the hefty cost for just 30 seconds to showcase a company’s product, there is a high risk and reward to spend that much money, where a highly entertaining ad can boost brand sales for a company, and the opposite landing the wrong way and becoming a million dollar dud.
Super Bowl ads have become so popular with viewers that USA TODAY features their official Ad Meter contest. During each Super Bowl fans can watch the ads and vote on which ones they liked the best and the highest ranked ad wins. This year, the highest rated ad was Budweiser’s ‘American Icons’ that featured the well recognized Clydesdale horse and a baby eagle growing up together before taking flight. Notably this year, there were a lot of ads that were heavily criticized for prompting and featuring AI, with “23% of Super Bowl commercials—15 out of the 66 ads” about AI according to iSpot via Adweek.
“[The AI ads] were all just bad, and definitely just not good ads. That one where it was the robots drinking oil was just weird [and] made me uncomfortable,” senior Ben Everard said.
Beyond these AI commercials, the typical celebrity filled, pop culture references and humorous and out of the box skit ads that fill the screen during the Super Bowl were present. Pepsi’s ad called ‘The Choice’ was popular as it featured their rival’s iconic mascot, the Cola Cola Polar Bear realizing it preferred Pepsi over Coke.
“I like the Pepsi one a lot too because it was a clapback against Coke because they’re using AI in all their stuff,” Everard said.
Other notable ads this year include Lay’s “Last Harvest” catering to family owned potato farms and Dunkin’ Donuts “Good Will Hunting” full of celebrities like Ben Affleck and Tom Brady in a “Good Will Hunting” sitcom.
As interest in the NFL and the Super Bowl continues to grow globally, it is safe to say that the ads during the big game are only going to get more super.
