Super Bowl LX: 12 takeaways from this year’s ad lineup

Advertising in the Super Bowl is a massive opportunity for your brand. But it’s also a huge investment — one you want to be sure you get right. 

Learning from the most successful ads is one way that can help you get it right next year or even add into your future brand campaigns. 

So what can we learn from some of the top performing ads among this year’s lineup? Here’s our key takeaways for how to make a great Super Bowl ad.

TL;DR: 

1. Be entertaining

2. Be distinctive

3. Craft a compelling narrative

4. Focus on the emotions

5. Find a real consumer insight

6. Let the brand and product shine

7. Land your implicit associations

8. Tie into a longer-term strategy

9. Target strategically

10. Extend the life of your campaign

11. Capitalize on the moment — even without an ad

12. Optimize your advertising with consumer feedback

1. Be entertaining 

As a Super Bowl advertiser, you’re part of the show! 

Viewers have tuned in to be entertained, so you have to deliver that. Your ad has to be something that viewers want to watch, so they don’t get distracted with grabbing more snacks or turning to their phone. And it has to be something that people want to talk about tomorrow. 

Talkability is often tied to some surprise (like a celebrity used in an unexpected way), cultural relevance or a strong emotional payoff. The Super Bowl can be a place to convey new information — like a new product launch — but it has to be done in an entertaining way.

Ring did that very well this year. It announced its feature that can help find lost dogs in an emotionally compelling way that fits in with the Super Bowl experience! 

If you can’t be entertaining, there’s no way you’ll stand out among all the other entertainment that night. But of course, entertainment is just the beginning.

2. Be distinctive

A successful ad must do two things: Capture attention and hold attention. 

To capture attention, your ad must be distinctive. It needs to stand out as something new that audiences haven’t seen before. That is certainly no easy feat, but it is where Super Bowl ads tend to excel compared to the average US ad. 

Pringles’ “Pringleleo,” Budweiser’s “American Icons,” Oakley Meta’s “Athletic Intelligence is Here” and NFL’s “You Are Special” are some of the top scoring ads in distinctiveness this year. 

These ads are all so different from each other, but that’s the point! They stand out as something uniquely different. So think about how you can do something unusual,

unexpected or visually impactful to capture attention.

3. Craft a compelling narrative

After you’ve captured attention, you have to hold onto it — and that’s where a compelling narrative comes in. 

We’re all drawn to a good story. A story has the power to keep us invested, focused and interested in how the story ends. An ad isn’t a movie, but there’s no reason it can’t be structured like one. 

Think of your ad as a 30-60 second movie and take inspiration from any great story you’ve ever seen: Start with a hook, establish the setting, characters and scenario, introduce a conflict or struggle and build on the tension until it reaches a climax — with a satisfying resolution that leaves people on a good feeling. 

Ads like Budweiser’s “American Icons” and Toyota “Superhero Belt” did this very well this year. They told compelling stories that kept us watching — and connected with us emotionally along the way. 

We also like Michelob ULTRA’s story this year. “The ULTRA Instructor” begins with a man who is always buying the ULTRAs for his friends because he’s the last one down the mountain. Then he’s taught to ski in a funny montage with a great soundtrack. In the end, he’s not the last one down the mountain and doesn’t have to buy the beer! It’s a clear beginning, middle and end that keeps us engaged.

4. Focus on the emotions

A critical element of any great story is how it made you feel. 

Did it make you laugh? Did it make you cry? Were you scared or anxious through the action and then relieved when it ended well? 

A story that doesn’t make you feel anything isn’t a very good one. Audiences may forget the specific details of your ad, but they won’t easily forget the way they felt watching it.

Super Bowl ads tend to over perform the average US ad in laughter (which makes sense, since Super Bowl ads need to entertain!), but we tend to see a lot of heartwarming ads too, like we saw with Budweiser, NFL, Lay’s, Dove, Ring, Redfin & Rocket and Toyota this year. 

Find those ways to engage audiences on a deeper level, either by tugging on their heartstrings, making them feel nostalgic, showing empathy for their pain, surprising them, inspiring them or making them laugh out loud. 

5. Find a real consumer insight

Many of the best ads are those that are grounded in a real consumer insight. These are ideas that resonate and are instantly understood, but aren’t too obvious that you’ve really considered them before. 

These are truths like Snickers’ “you’re not you when you’re hungry” or Always’ idea that doing something “like a girl” doesn’t mean “bad” to a young girl, it only comes to mean that over time as society tells them so. 

When you can find a real truth — and a compelling way to associate your brand with that truth — that’s where the advertising magic is. 

Hims & Hers “Rich People Live Longer” tapped into a relatable consumer insight this year: Many people are feeling the negative impact of income inequality. The ad boldly presented the problem with the current system and positioned its brand and product as a solution. The result is something that struck a nerve with audiences. 

6. Let the brand and product shine

Your brand and product should always be primary considerations in your advertising.  Remember that you aren’t just making an ad to entertain, you’re advertising a product and building a brand. 

People tend to remember an overall summary of an ad. If your brand or product isn’t a part of that summary, it probably won’t get credit for the ad. 

And that’s clearly not a good use of your $8 million investment. You want the associations and feelings from the ad to reinforce the strength of your brand and product in consumers’ minds. That way, your brand comes to mind in key moments when they are considering purchasing products like yours. 

Prioritize giving your brand a role to play in the story. 

This year, Bud Light showed a whole wedding diving down a hill in slow motion after one keg of Bud Light. Pringles showed Sabrina Carpenter falling in love with a man made of Pringles. 

The products themselves had a clear role in the story that was hard to miss! It’s even easier to showcase your brand with distinctive brand assets (DBAs). DBAs are a branding shortcut, and they can often be used to land emotion in a more intuitive way. They allow you to give your brand a role without forcing it so you can tell more engaging stories.

7. Land your implicit associations 

Great ads often don’t just give the brand a role, they tell you something about that brand — but often not explicitly.

For example, this year we saw Pepsi demonstrate that Pepsi Zero Sugar is delicious. The ad didn’t say this out loud, but rather it showed that a polar bear (often known for liking a different soda) preferred Pepsi Zero Sugar — and had a whole existential crisis as a result. Pringles’ “Pringleleo” is another great example. It showed that Pringles are so irresistible that even a woman who had fallen in love with a man made of Pringles wouldn’t hesitate to eat him when the opportunity arose. 

These ads end up conveying key messages about the products being advertised, but in a more subtle way. This is critical for the Super Bowl where you want to entertain, not educate. Think about how you can land your own key messages in an implicit way, rather than a more direct (and less entertaining) way.

8. Tie into a longer-term strategy

Super Bowl season is a critical time of the year for advertising, but your Super Bowl ad doesn’t stand alone. 

It’s part of the bigger picture of your brand identity. Ideally your ad should feel like your brand and connect to how your brand shows up through the rest of the year. 

Using the same tone, personality and DBAs is a given, but it’s bigger than that. It’s about using the same brand platform you’ve been using all year — just giving it a bigger voice on a bigger stage. Or using your Super Bowl campaign to highlight some aspect of your brand or product you’d like to raise awareness of (like Instacart’s banana message this year).

It’s about thinking of this one campaign as just one part of the whole picture. For many brands, this also includes thinking about how your brand connects with the NFL not just on the night of the Super Bowl, but season after season. 

The Super Bowl gets the most eyes, but there’s a whole world of opportunity to continue to engage football fans year-round. You can even use this time to think beyond football! Michelob ULTRA used its Super Bowl ad this year to remind audiences that it is an official sponsor of Team USA in the 2026 Winter Olympics and Paralympics! 

9. Target strategically

The Super Bowl is a unique opportunity to have your ad seen by over 100 million people at one time. People of all ages, ethnic backgrounds and genders. 

For some advertisers, the Super Bowl is a great opportunity to go broad, but for others, it’s an opportunity to reach a specific segment. It really all depends on the goal of the brand and the strategy of the marketing team. 

Want to grow market share with Gen Z? Featuring an up-and-coming TikTok star might be a great tactic. Need to increase awareness across multiple generations? Shared culture might give a brand the greatest chance of being more widely talked about after the game. 

But some brands are already extremely well known and awareness is not their primary goal with Super Bowl advertising. Many brands use this moment in a more targeted way, to achieve a business goal within a specific focus segment of the population.

For example, Fanatics Sportsbook’s “Bet on Kendall” scored higher with women than with men, but their goal was to increase the market for sports betting by appealing to those who don’t regularly bet on sports — which likely includes many women. So that’s in line with their strategy! 

10. Extend the life of your campaign

$8 million is a steep investment for a single ad placement. To get the most bang for your buck, don’t think of a Super Bowl spot as a single ad, think of it as just one piece of a bigger campaign.

The pre-release season is becoming bigger and bigger each year. Teasers that are as engaging as the full ads themselves are often released online with complete social campaigns built around them — some are even placed in playoff games in linear or streaming TV to build anticipation. 

We see more brands each year release their full ads a week or two before the big game to get people talking and be featured in all the Super Bowl write-ups before the game. 

We see many of these brands release extended versions of their 30 second ads too — and these longer versions allow for more emotional engagement and, in many cases, more laughs.

Then there are the live activations in the Bay Area the week before the Super Bowl. Concerts, parties, pop-ups, brunches, tournaments, tastings, player meet-and-greets and more all serve to connect with fans on the ground and allow fans who can’t attend in person to feel connected through social media.

All of these other activities surrounding the Super Bowl help to extend the life of your campaign so it lives beyond the one night.

11. Capitalize on the moment — even without an ad

More and more we’re seeing brands capitalize on the excitement around the Super Bowl and all the extra attention on advertising by launching Super Bowl-style campaigns — without actually advertising in the Super Bowl.

In one of many examples, this year we saw Jeep’s “Billy Goes to the River” bring all the over-the-top weirdness and humor we might expect from a Super Bowl ad, but it didn’t air in the Super Bowl itself.

In a world where brands release their Super Bowl ads in advance with massive social campaigns and live activations to support it, who says you need to actually advertise in the big game to get in on the action? If audiences are paying extra attention to advertising around this time of year, it only makes sense for even non-Super Bowl advertisers to put out their most creative work right now.

And it helps when your brand fits into the occasion, like Frank’s Redhot. Commonly used on buffalo chicken wings that are typically served at Super Bowl parties, Frank’s usually releases star-studded social campaigns this time of year, including an ad with Ludacris this year and Paris Hilton last year. They just don’t show up during the big game.

If you can’t justify the $8 million price point, it’s worth thinking about how your brand can capitalize on the moment anyway! So much is possible in the days and weeks surrounding the game itself.

12. Optimize your advertising with consumer feedback

The days of merely testing ads are over. Today, it’s all about optimizing your investments to get the most out of them. 

Creative teams are often fearful of bringing consumer feedback into the process too early, lest their creativity be stifled, or their vision be stalled… or worse yet, never come to life. 

But Super Bowl ads are high-stakes investments with a big price tag. Capturing feedback from consumers early and often and using it to optimize your ad is important. 

Optimizing with consumer feedback can help you achieve your goals, not only with a single ad, but with your Super Bowl advertising and with your football and sports marketing strategy at large. 

With a deep understanding of what works with consumers, and agile optimization at every step of the process, you’ll be able to create the very best work, to launch your Super Bowl advertising campaigns with confidence and the data to back it up!

While all of these takeaways, like entertaining, being distinctive, leaning on emotions, letting your brand shine and more are fantastic baseline strategies to keep in mind, they alone aren't enough to ensure your ad is a success. 

To create a winning Super Bowl ad today, you need consumer feedback. Full stop.

That’s where connected consumer insights platforms like Zappi come in. By combining these takeaways with consumer research, you can ensure you’re set up for success, which is especially important on a stage (and investment) as big as this.