It’s likely that more than 125 million people across all platforms watched the Seattle Seahawks defeat the New England Patriots in Super Bowl LX, which also featured Bad Bunny’s much-discussed halftime show. Nielsen estimated 127.7 million viewers watched Super Bowl LIX between the Philadelphia Eagles and Kansas City Chiefs last year, marking the largest audience for a Super Bowl ever. So this year’s Big Game audience numbers have a high bar to surpass.
No matter the final ratings score, the game invariably promises the most engaged live viewership of any single media experience. As for the ads themselves, the matchup between consumers from Massachusetts and Washington state — which The Outcome’s John McDermott explored last week — pitted Dunkin’ drinkers versus Coors Light enthusiasts, Cape Cod chips versus Cheetos, and extended to the advertising breaks, where brands retreated to safe territory despite the massive audience.
Advertising creatives’ conservative approach is somewhat puzzling, given the record-breaking audience last year — 2025’s viewership was up 3.2% from Super Bowl LVIII in 2024. Why wereBowl LX ads so careful, , with celebrity cameos dominating the airwaves and virtually no brands risking even a hint of controversy.?
“Safe and a sea of sameness,” says Allen Adamson, co-founder and managing partner at brand consultancy Metaforce, when asked to describe this year’s themes. “Light celebrity humor across the board, and nobody is going near the third rail of anything politically or socially divisive. When everyone plays it safe, everyone produces average work. Not great, not a disaster — and nothing anyone remembers on Monday morning.”
The creative homogeneity reflected a broader shift in the ways that advertisers approach the Super Bowl. Humor remained the dominant tone, with spots from Instacart featuring Ben Stiller, Hellmann’s starring Andy Samberg channeling his inner Neal Diamond, and Pepsi mocking Coke’s polar bear in a therapist’s office. Still, few brands attempted to differentiate beyond celebrity casting and production polish.
“We’re absolutely still on the ‘spend lots of money assume lots of eyeballs’ strategy for Super Bowl ads,” says Allan Regan, EVP of Creative & Design at Salt XC. “We still dust off celebs and high profile directors and say, ‘well if X is in it and X shares it then, ROI achieved.’”
Budweiser stood out as the exception, doubling down on Americana with its Clydesdales for the brand’s 150th anniversary rather than chasing laughs. “As a palate cleanser in a sea of funny celeb ads it’s getting a lot of traction,” Regan says.
The Spanish-language advertising from e.l.f. and Telemundo represented another departure from the formula, however. “I’d point to inclusion, specifically the Spanish-language ads from e.l.f. and Telemundo,” says Jacob Davis, executive director and Global Head of Performance at Crossmedia. “It’s not something we’ve seen before at this scale in the Super Bowl, and their close placement right after the halftime show felt purposeful rather than incidental.”
While brand-building still dominated Super Bowl LX, the expectation that these multimillion-dollar spots must also drive measurable performance has fundamentally altered how advertisers approach the broadcast.
“The Super Bowl remains one of the last truly powerful brand-building moments in culture, but the best advertisers no longer treat brand and performance as separate objectives,” says Pat LaCroix, EVP of Media and Growth at BarkleyOKRP. “Today’s best Super Bowl campaigns are built to compress years of brand building into one moment in time and convert that attention through an integrated playbook across channels: search, social, CRM, site, retail.”
That integrated multii-channel approach is what stood out this year.
“Super Bowl advertising is no longer purely a symbolic brand connection, notes Kris Johns, CEO and founder of AdGood. “Branding still matters, but it now has to get a foot in the door. More ads are designed to extend beyond the TV moment through QR codes, shoppable layers, or local follow-on offers tied to real outcomes.”
Salesforce’s Slackbot spot represented this shift dramatically, swapping traditional celebrity power for influencer clout, harnessing YouTube mega-creator MrBeast (aka Jimmy Donaldson) to build the entire creative around a puzzle-solving call to action with a million-dollar prize.
“The vast majority of spots are still overwhelmingly brand-led, and that feels intentional,” says Mick Sutter, Chief Creative Officer at White64. “But Salesforce’s Slackbot spot stood out for how overtly response-driven it was, leaning into a clear call to action to solve a puzzle with their product — a clever product-demo structure.”
AI.com’s trailer-style spot and Squarespace’s art-house film with Emma Stone both included direct “get your handle now” and “get your domain before it’s gone” calls to action, suggesting performance metrics are moving from post-game analytics to creative briefs.
Lay’s “72 Hour Challenge” took a similar approach, building an entire campaign around action rather than just memorability. “The main reason Lay’s ran the ads it did was that 40%+ of Americans didn’t know Lay’s came from real potatoes,” Davis says.
Last year’s data supports this trending performance imperative. TickPick saw more than 1,800 app installs in a single minute after their Super Bowl spot, ultimately driving close to 12,000 installs over 28 days, according to Amit Sharan, SVP of Marketing at Tatari. Fiverr took a hybrid approach, airing a humorous brand-led ad during the game but then retargeting website traffic on connected TV with direct response creative that resulted in 75% lower customer acquisition costs than normal TV campaigns.
The proliferation of second-screen behavior has fundamentally changed how brands activate around the Super Bowl moment, with some advertisers treating smartphones as the primary canvas.
“There’s a shift happening where more brands are interpreting the Super Bowl as an opportunity for cultural relevance versus purely branding, and they’re betting on the power of the second screen to do this,” says Jose Serra, associate strategy director at Movers+Shakers.
Doritos epitomized this approach, opting to skip the purchase of in-game inventory, and, instead, running a TikTok TopView ad with influencers Dylan Efron and Connor Wood. “As everyone anticipated a big ad that never showed up on the big screen, Doritos met Gen Z where they were — on their phones,” Serra says.
The strategy reflects a broader recognition that the $10 million entry price for a Super Bowl spot buys something increasingly rare: opportunities to step into a consumer’s experience, rather than stick a foot in the door.. “Brands aren’t paying to interrupt people, they’re paying for a rare moment of openness, when audiences actually want to hear from them,” Sutter says.
But that openness doesn’t guarantee memorability, let alone brand building. “Can we truly say that any Super Bowl ad drives leads and sales?” Regan asks. “Is Ben Stiller falling off a stage making me consider Instacart more than I did before I watched it? Not unless it gets passed along. Awareness is king when the Super Bowl ad brief these days prompts, ‘Is it going to go viral?’”
Innovation-focused messaging, particularly around artificial intelligence, created confusion rather than clarity for many viewers. “The Super Bowl was dominated by AI brands aiming to land innovation and excitement,” Serra says. “The results? Consumers interpreted mixed messages and shared hot takes across social.”
Brands like Pokemon, Dunkin’, Instacart, and Xfinity found more success creating nostalgia and escapism through familiar brand worlds. Hope and empowerment showed up through spots from the NFL, Dove, and Redfin, but Serra suggests these messages “may have been overshadowed by the higher volume of innovation messaging.”
Adamson’s assessment cuts to the fundamental tension: “These ads aren’t about branding. Real branding means connecting your brand to something meaningful in consumers’ minds. Very few of these spots do that. For most advertisers, the best case scenario is getting their spot shared on social media with a comment like ‘this was my favorite, made me laugh.’”
The contrast between Ring’s emotionally resonant product benefit story and the majority of celebrity-driven humor spots illustrates the gap between effective brand building and expensive entertainment. “The rest are paying $10 million plus millions more in celebrity fees for a fleeting chuckle and a logo at the end,” Adamson says.
“The real upside isn’t only the immediate response, it’s the downstream efficiency lift that makes future media work harder and customer acquisition cost more efficient across channels,” LaCroix adds. “The winners aren’t choosing brand or performance; they’re using the Super Bowl as a force multiplier for both.”
