Super Bowl Ad Landscape Unrecognizable Compared To A Decade Ago

With the Super Bowl now officially behind us, the narratives on social media from the day after are always interesting to track.

It looks like a lot of people are sour about the overall game, the halftime show, and, most interestingly, the commercials.

The Super Bowl is a unique event in which, other than maybe the previews before a big movie, it's the only time people seem to care as much about the advertisements as they do the main event.

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A lot of folks on social media are noticing a shift from the fun-loving beer ads of yesteryear to the corporate slop pushing AI and miracle drugs put before us on Sunday night.

While this is certainly anecdotal evidence, at best, I decided to dive in and do a little research.

Have Super Bowl ads really shifted that much in the last 10 or 20 years?

Shockingly, for the most part, the answer is "yes."

I used ChatGPT to track the total number of ads from this year's Super Bowl and give me a breakdown of each "genre" of the commercials in question (AI, health/pharmaceutical, snacks, etc.).

The breakdown looked something like this.

Although food and snack ads were still up near the top, tech/software dominated the landscape with a total of 13 ads dedicated to the field.

This includes things like AI and others, like the infamous Ring doorbell "surveillance state" commercial that's been making the rounds on social media.

What makes this even more jarring is seeing a similar breakdown from Super Bowl 50, just ten years earlier.

Food and beverage still reigned supreme in 2016, with memorable ads from Doritos dominating the landscape, but you'll notice that tech and software ads were almost nonexistent by comparison, while artificial intelligence wasn't even a glimmer in our overlords' eyes a decade ago.

When looking at Super Bowl XL from the distant past of 2006, it paints an even crazier picture of how far we've come (or fallen).

There's food and beverage still at the top of the heap, but there were way more car ads in 2006, and next to no tech ads.

You'll also notice there were far fewer ads overall 10–20 years ago, which could be explained in two equal parts, with the NFL tweaking the game to feature more time for advertising and companies realizing their public's shrinking attention span, opting for quantity over quality – i.e. shorter ads to cram more products in vs. longer ads that many remember as being "better."

2006 seemed to trend more towards traditional consumer products, like beer, snacks, razors, and cars, while 2016 more or less featured the same split.

It was only around 2026 when "big pharma" and tech started to enter the advertising space, with pharmaceutical advertisements barely making a dent in the previous 20 years.

The split looks something like this when all three are laid out side-by-side.

So, if you noticed a shift towards tech, AI, and pharmaceutical ads in this year's Super Bowl, you're not going crazy.

The data backs this up, and I am of the personal belief that this is a disturbing trend.

These tech and pharma companies try to disguise their intent with "heartfelt" and "personable" ads (see: the Ring ad I discussed before), and put an emphasis on increased "connectivity," but in an age where we are becoming more "connected" with one another, the divide only seems to increase.

We are way more "connected" than we were in 2006, yet we've never been more divided.

Funny how that works.

Pharma being framed as "health" is hilarious too, given that a lot of that stems from pushing GLP-1 shots down everyone's throats.

I don't have a problem with GLP-1's being used for weight loss when it's necessary and/or a last ditch option, but a top-tier athlete like Serena Williams using them and shilling them to the general public as a miracle weight loss drug feels a little icky.

Serena doesn't "need" them, and, chances are, neither do you.

I don't know what the solution is, though it would be naive of me to just say "go back to beer commercials at the Super Bowl."

It is worth noting the most universally loved commercial from this year's Super Bowl was a Budweiser ad.

Alcohol isn't the answer to all of our problems, but when it comes to fixing the landscape of Super Bowl commercials, it's a hell of a place to start.