Brands are betting big on AI this Super Bowl. The question is: will it score or slip?
Super Bowl 2025 is here, and some of the biggest highlights of such a sporting event are the advertisements. One of the biggest draws, non-sports fans included, is the ingenuity and quirkiness embedded within a very short time frame, typically 30 seconds to a minute.
With the cost this year of a 30-second slot at halftime being a scorching $8 million, companies clearly want to stand out. And with a little help from artificial intelligence, their brand or product can be enhanced immensely.
Super Bowl 2025 is estimated to generate $700 million in ad revenue, a significant jump from last year’s $600 million. With spending so high, and around 200 million viewers tuning in worldwide, the stakes have never been higher for brands.
However, with the Hollywood Writers Guild of America strike of 2023 helping to protect actors against the emergence of AI in on-screen entertainment, we can rest assured that Matt Damon, Drew Barrymore, Meg Ryan, and Miss Piggy remain intact.
Still, AI has made its way into mainstream advertising and, tantalizingly, will feature both ads about AI and those created with it this year.
This year's line-up
Both OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini will make their debuts this year – the former typically kept under wraps and the latter focusing on small business owners across all 50 states.
Regrettably, Google had to alter the Wisconsin ad, as the AI had mentioned Gouda as "one of the most popular cheeses in the world, accounting for 50 to 60 percent of the world's cheese consumption." Despite AI getting carried away here, the impact these Gemini ads will have on the US population looks set to be positive.
There are intriguing ads about AI services, too, with the stars of the show being GoDaddy Airo (Walton Goggins), Salesforce (Matthew McConaughey), Booking.com (The Muppets), and Meta’s AI glasses (Chris Pratt and Chris Hemsworth).
Without spoiling the plot, GoDaddy makes an inspired analogy between the life of an actor adapting to roles – much like an AI-powered website builder. AI was used to assist with vivid storyboarding, though it wasn’t used in post-production.
Salesforce delivers a sharp example, with McConaughey in sparkling form, showing how its service Agentforce can help prevent a dining disaster for the customer. The situational interplay in the ad does a great job of relaying to the layman the context of how an AI agent could help smooth out the edges of a tricky logistical situation.
Booking turns on the usual Muppet charm to allude to how AI can help book a top-notch holiday without mentioning it specifically.
This year's curveball comes in the form of Meta’s ad. The ad depicts an art gallery scene where Ray-Ban smart glasses are entertainingly used to unravel various situations, taking a niche approach to reach a mainstream audience. It seems to be a confident gamble from Meta, and the Super Bowl is the ideal playground.
While enjoying the previews of these commercials days before the game, the content clearly showcases a buzz about AI and its efficiency. The integration of AI in both the services it provides and the fine-tuning of the creative process speaks volumes across these ads.
Be that as it may, most armchair fans will simply be dazzled by the performances and the dramatic plot twists packed into mere seconds.
And with big tech at the big game in the form of Google, OpenAI, and Meta, AI is officially in play – whether it's the winning move or just another roll of the dice.
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