Post-Superbowl Advertisement Reviews

This year’s Super Bowl, watched by nearly 125 million U.S. viewers on broadcast and streaming platforms, once again proved to be one of the most expensive and visible advertising stages of the year, with 30-second ad spots selling for up to $10 million, based off of an article from Reuters.

Post-game evaluations from advertising experts and audience rankings provide useful data on which commercials achieved strong engagement and which did not. According to the USA TODAY Ad Meter, Budweiser’s “American Icons” commercial ranked first among Super Bowl ads, earning the top spot for its combination of familiar brand imagery including the Clydesdales and a clear connection to the beer’s heritage and values. According an article from AOL where they ordered the Super Bowl commercials from least liked to most liked, other top-ranked commercials included Lay’s “Last Harvest,” Pepsi’s “The Choice,” Dunkin’s “Good Will Dunkin’,” and Michelob Ultra’s “The ULTRA Instructor,” which rounded out the top five performers.

Expert reviews also point to multiple ads that delivered a meaningful narrative or emotional elements while clearly promoting their brands’ benefits. For example, Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management post-game evaluation ranked Google’s Gemini ad highly because it combined emotional storytelling with demonstrations of how the product could be used in practical, relatable situations. Another article by WWAYTV3 had a best to worst superbowl ad list. The same review panel also identified Anthropic’s commercial for its Claude AI chatbot as one of the most effective, noting its clear messaging about what the product does and why viewers might engage with it, an important benchmark in advertising effectiveness. 

Not all commercials performed as well. The Kellogg panel gave failing grades to Coinbase’s ad and the ai.com commercial, with reviewers explaining that both ads lacked clarity about the product being advertised, a fundamental weakness for television advertising, particularly on a stage as prominent as the Super Bowl. In addition, some ads such as Ritz Crackers’ “Shell Phone” and Svedka’s “Shake Your Bots Off”  were ranked among the lower-performing commercials in other media analyses, often because they did not clearly communicate the product or benefit within the short time frame.

Evaluating Super Bowl advertisements through data-driven rankings and expert reviews reinforces several key advertising principles: clarity of message, emotional resonance, and alignment with brand identity. When these elements are present, as they were in several of this year’s top performers, ads are more likely to be remembered and discussed after the game. Conversely, commercials that fail to clearly articulate their product or value proposition tend to score lower in post-superbowl evaluations.

Taking post-game rankings into consideration makes finding what advertisement best resonated with the audience easy. Making sure your advertisement speaks to its audience is clearly important when trying to reach an audience with a product or service. As a group looking to go into the field of advertising, knowing what works and what doesn’t work is essential.