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In the digital age, the best spots don’t make a splash so much as deliver a payoff.
After a few years of relatively stagnant viewership in and around the time of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Super Bowl has reclaimed its status as a perennially record-setting television event. The 2025 game was the most-watched telecast in US history, with nearly 128 million viewers. The broadcast whose record it broke was the 2024 Super Bowl.
So maybe it’s not a surprise that ad inventory for the 2026 game sold out “earlier than ever,” according to NBCUniversal, on whose networks the game will air, with 30-second spots reportedly priced at $7 million.
But are those smart investments? We’re talking about a 105-year-old sports league whose fans average 55 years of age. And from a media perspective, spending $7 million to fill half a minute of football-game airtime hardly seems innovative. In an extremely online and algorithmically directed world, where marketers are able to use huge amounts of data and niche channels to target minutely tailored audiences, it may seem downright anachronistic. Blowing the budget on a Super Bowl ad is a marketing strategy of a very old vintage.
And yet, some of the sharpest minds behind the most influential brands in the world are still eager to pay a premium to be a part of the big game—not in spite of modern digital marketing but because of it. The era of big data and specialized channels is also the era of endless and eminently disposable artificial-intelligence slop, and against that backdrop, the Super Bowl spot has become the ultimate designation of value. It is the verification badge that legitimizes a monthlong digital campaign, signaling to both human audiences and algorithmic models that this brand, this moment, and this narrative matter.
A few decades ago, a Super Bowl ad was the entirety of the marketing event. Apple’s classic ad from the 1984 Super Bowl was kept under wraps until the broadcast and was only ever shown once. However, now marketers will tease ads as early as possible and try to keep the effects going indefinitely.
In the digital age, the value of a Super Bowl ad lies in the injection of data and interest into the online ecosystem, making it about far more than the 30-second spot itself.
Apple needed a “shock and awe” strategy because it had no internet. Today, shock and awe is inefficient. You need sustained algorithmic relevance. The algorithms powering Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and X feed off velocity and volume. They reward engagement signals such as search queries, mentions, shares, and watch time. A monthlong campaign trains the recommendation algorithms to recognize your brand entity as trending, ensuring that when the $7 million spot finally airs, the algorithmic pathways are already greased to push your content to the top of the feed because it’s part of an evolving story.
A good contrast to the old paradigm represented by Apple’s “1984” ad is Dunkin’s 2024 spot featuring Ben Affleck, Matt Damon, and Tom Brady as a boy band called the DunKings. The ad didn’t just reach viewers during the Super Bowl—it served as the core of a dynamic ecosystem before, during, and after the game.
Video Transcript
Jack Harlow: I don’t think you should do this.
Ben Affleck: Last year, she came to my work. Now, I got to show her what I can do.
Speaker 2: He’s here.
Speaker 3: Affleck-
Jennifer Lopez: No.
Speaker 3: -on the track.
Ben: What up, Bronx? For your consideration, here comes the Boston massacre. The DunKings. Touchdown Tommy on them keys. Play it coach.
Tom Brady: Got it.
Ben: I’m open. Need no introduction, my partner.
Matt Damon: Sometimes it’s really hard to be your friend.
Ben: You said you were going to support me.
DunKings: DunKings. [singing]
Don’t dunk away my heart
Why you dunking me, girl?
Why you dunking DunKings?
Tom: Dunkings.
DunKings: My heart.
Matt: How do you like them donuts? I’m so sorry.
Ben: You had to see it, but I forgive you. Lay us on the track.
Tom: Are we going to be on the album?
Jennifer: We talked about this.
Ben: That’s cold. You’re blinded by them pinstripes.
Speaker 4: Wrap it up.
Ben: There goes Babe Ruth.
Jennifer: Tom, you can stay.
Matt: You remember when I told you I’d do anything for you? This is anything.
Ben: Chill. They’re naming a drink after us.
Shortly before the Super Bowl, Dunkin’ started priming the pump with staged paparazzi shots featuring Affleck and Jennifer Lopez during the Grammy Awards—a great place to generate social media buzz and bring those interested in lifestyle and entertainment content into Dunkin’s ecosystem. Dunkin’ also tried to drive chatter offline, placing teasers featuring Affleck’s name on billboards.
The ad itself was created to be as Instagrammable as possible to maximize sharing during the broadcast and afterward. Those orange tracksuits are terrific meme fodder, and the mishmash of featured celebrities—which also included Lopez, social media star Charli D’Amelio, and rapper Jack Harlow—was able to draw in a variety of audiences across sports, music, and influencer culture.
Dunkin’ kept the conversations going after the spot by offering DunKing tracksuits for sale (they sold out in 20 minutes) and featuring limited-time menu items such as the DunKings Iced Coffee, the Everything Encore Breakfast Sandwich, and the Hazelnut Heartthrob Iced Coffee. It also released the DunKings’ “Don’t Dunk Away at My Heart” as a full-length track on YouTube, Spotify, and other streaming platforms.
Was it a perfect campaign? Probably not. There were more memorable ads in that same Super Bowl, including the Kia ice-skating spot and the Jennifer Aniston Uber Eats ad. Given that Affleck, Brady, Damon, and Lopez all belong to Gen X, it’s possible Dunkin’ missed opportunities to bring a younger generation into the franchise.
CeraVe’s TV spot was the punch line of a three-week-long internet joke—and all that preparation meant that when it aired, the recommendation algorithms were pushing it to the top.
However, the data around the digital amplification of the ad show that “The DunKings” was arguably the most successful Super Bowl ad of 2024. The pump-priming strategy paid off in ways that weren’t necessarily obvious at the time it aired. While the celebrities in the ad were older, the high-visibility tracksuits and intentionally cringy meme bait of the ad led it to drive favorability among Gen Z more than any other group. In fact, the brand-tracking platform QuestBrand stated that the long-tail campaign drove Dunkin’ brand affinity among Gen Z to its highest point ever.
While the ad itself scored well in traditional trackers like USA Today’s Super Bowl Ad Meter, the digital ecosystem exploded, with Dunkin’ Instagram views growing 1,272 percent and digital impressions reaching over 500 million.
Most importantly from Dunkin’s perspective, this digital success translated into record sales. The company reported that the Wednesday following the 2024 Super Bowl was the highest-grossing donut sales day in its 74-year history.
CeraVe was another brand that had outsize success in using its Super Bowl ad to amplify its presence in the digital ecosystem. The skincare brand laid the groundwork for its ad by fabricating a conspiracy that actor Michael Cera was the company’s actual founder. In January 2024, influencer Haley Kalil posted a video of a “chance” encounter with Cera at a Brooklyn pharmacy, where he was signing bottles of CeraVe. This narrative gained traction on Reddit and TikTok, and Cera did a hilariously bad job of debunking the rumors, saying on podcasts that he had “skin in the game.” By the time the commercial aired, the campaign had already generated 15 billion earned (unpaid) impressions. The TV spot was the punch line of a three-week-long internet joke—and all that preparation meant that when it aired, the recommendation algorithms were pushing it to the top.
We are moving toward a future where the TV spot becomes dynamic. We may soon see AI-generated variants of Super Bowl ads served to digital devices simultaneously, personalized to the viewer’s demographics and behavior, while the linear broadcast serves as the master narrative. In this future, the brands that win won’t be the ones with the funniest jokes, but the ones that understand that the $7 million spot is just the price of influence over the most important algorithms on earth.
Tom Hafen is adjunct professor of marketing at Chicago Booth and CMO at the law firm Morgan and Morgan. Andrew Pagonis is vice president of marketing at Morgan and Morgan and was previously senior product lead for Google Gemini.
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