“Because of the Super Bowl’s status as a pop culture event with a fun party atmosphere, the vast majority of brands will avoid any dark or divisive tone and instead allow consumers to escape from thinking about these troubled times,” he said.
Demand is higher than ever, since live sporting events are one of the few remaining places in the fractured media landscape where advertisers can reach a large audience. NBC sold out of ad space in September.
Lazarus said 40% of advertisers bought across all of NBC’s major sports properties, and 70% of Super Bowl advertisers bought the Olympics as well.
AI developer Anthropic is airing a pair of TV commercials, one during the game and one pre-game, that points out Claude, its chatbot, doesn’t have ads.
The in-game ad shows a man exercising asking a person representing a chatbot for help getting a six-pack, but he’s fed an ad instead. Although Anthropic doesn’t name the company, OpenAI has said it will place ads on free and cheaper versions of its chatbot ChatGPT.
Featuring celebrities is a tried-and-true way advertisers can get goodwill from viewers. This year, Fanatics Sportsbook enlists Kendall Jenner to talk about the “Kardashian Kurse,” in which bad things happen to basketball players she dates.
George Clooney appears in a Grubhub add to promote a deal that the delivery app offers to “Eat the Fees” on orders of $50 or more.
Sabrina Carpenter tries to build the perfect man out of Pringles, but he keeps falling apart in Pringles’ ad.
Several ads feature more than one celebrity or sports star. Michelob Ultra shows Kurt Russell training actor Lewis Pullman, as Olympic snowboarder Chloe Kim and hockey player T.J. Oshie watch on a ski slope.
Xfinity reunites Sam Neill, Laura Dern and Jeff Goldblum in a tongue-in-cheek reimagining of “Jurassic Park” that shows an Xfinity tech bringing power back to the island so nothing goes awry.
And Uber Eats enlists Matthew McConaughey for the second year in a row to convince celebrities — this year it is Bradley Cooper and Parker Posey — that football is a conspiracy to make people hungry so they order food.
Liquid I.V., which makes an electrolyte drink mix, has teased an ad about staying hydrated.
Hims & Hers — another company that offers GLP-1 weight loss drugs — has an ad that says the company gives people better access to health care that usually only rich people get.
“You could call this the GLP-1 Super Bowl,” said Tim Calkins, a clinical professor of marketing at Northwestern University. “Often you don’t see a lot from pharmaceutical companies on the Super Bowl, but this year we’re going to see quite a few showing up.”
This year, many advertisers elected to pull at the heartstrings with ads featuring families and animals.
Budweiser’s heartwarming ad shows a Clydesdale foal growing up with a bald eagle to the tune of Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Free Bird.” The ad celebrates Budweiser’s 150th anniversary.
Lay’s follows a father-daughter potato farming duo as the father retires and the daughter takes over, overlaid with a cover of Keane’s “Somewhere Only We Know.”
The heartfelt ads are “a response to politically divided times and lots of negative events being top of mind in the news,” Villanova’s Taylor said. “More of this year’s ads openly focus on humanity and being humane to others than I’ve ever seen in a Super Bowl.”
He said the Ring ad was a good example.
“Rather than focusing on the camera and its features, it brings attention to app users coming together as a community to help find lost dogs,” he said.
While the majority of Super Bowl advertisers release their ad early to try to capitalize on buzz, some hold back until game day to reveal their ad.
Pepsi-owned soft drink Poppi teased that pop star Charli XCX and actress Rachel Sennott will star in their ad.
Ben Affleck is back in an ad for Dunkin’ Donuts. A teaser spot showed him with ’90s sitcom legends Jennifer Aniston and Matt LeBlanc of “Friends” and Jason Alexander from “Seinfeld.”
And there are fewer car advertisers this year, but Cadillac is hinting that it will show off its new Formula 1 car in an ad.
