But the mysterious teaser worked; web searches for "What is AI.com" exploded. According to EDO, a company that helps businesses measure the impact of advertisements, AI.com was the top-performing ad of the night, with 9.1 times as much engagement as the average Super Bowl ad. But when interested people rushed to the website, they found an error message waiting for them. The company's website had immediately crashed.
X's Brand Ranx competition looked at overall mentions and sentiment to allocate awards in four categories: Most loved The ad with the most positive sentiment Most talked about The ad that sparks the most conversation Most shared - The ad that's re-posted the most Most Disruptive Outside TV The brand that owns the conversation without a TV ad These were all automatically ranked by its Grok AI model, which is why X was able to announce the winners pretty much immediately after the event.
While Super Bowl LX pits the Pacific Northwest against New England as the Seahawks and the Patriots take the field, another region of the U.S. will get its 30 seconds of fame. Tecovas -the cowboy boot brand that surpassed $300 million in sales last year-is debuting its first-ever Super Bowl ad to try to expand its audience in its 10th year of business.
The Super Bowl is still the biggest stage in advertising, but the smartest brands aren't treating it as a one-night spectacle. This year's most effective campaigns show how the Big Game has become a credibility signal, one that feeds algorithms, extends digital momentum and builds trust through participation, purpose and follow-through. The Super Bowl has fully reclaimed its place as the most influential moment in American media, but the way brands are using it has changed.
E.l.f. Beauty CFO Mandy Fields wants to play on the biggest stage there is. The rising beauty powerhouse, a Gen Z favorite, ran its first Super Bowl Sunday ad in 2023. From a finance perspective, Fields said the company's confidence in big-ticket Super Bowl investments stems from their long-term impact on brand awareness rather than a focus on immediate dollar-for-dollar return.
Let's rewind for a 10-second Super Bowl ad history lesson that goes like this: In 2011, Volkswagen decided to drop its full ad-called " The Force "-online the Wednesday before the Super Bowl. This was brand marketer blasphemy! But it worked. Ever since, more and more brands began dropping ads earlier and earlier, which then evolved into creating teasers for the ads to run even earlier.
But getting a clear read on results isn't easy in today's fragmented media landscape. "It's becoming harder as a media buyer to figure out how to buy live sports because there are so many access points," said Alex Block, EVP of global programmatic at Jellyfish, an agency owned by The Brandtech Group.
When Xfinity makes its national Super Bowl debut, it doesn't hedge its bets. It resurrects one of the most iconic films in movie history- Jurassic Park -reuniting Laura Dern, Jeff Goldblum, and Sam Neill, backed by John Williams's original score and directed by Taika Waititi. On the surface, it's blockbuster nostalgia. Underneath, it's a sharply executed brand strategy, and one that small business owners should pay attention to.
Some hastily put together, pro-ICE electronic billboard ads, paid for by a shady outfit with no known donors, have appeared in San Francisco ahead of the Super Bowl, and maybe in other cities as well. If there is some contingent of Americans who are still on the fence about the immigration-enforcement/citizen-harassment and killing actions of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, they are likely still in their cabins in the woods or under a rock, and not visiting San Francisco for Super Bowl Week.
It appears that ads from companies like Polymarket or Kalshi will not air during the upcoming Super Bowl. According to the NFL, the league placed prediction market commercials under its "prohibited categories" for Super Bowl advertising on February 8. As reported by Front Office Sports, prediction markets now sit under the same category as tobacco, pornography, firearms, "and other controversial subjects."
