This year’s Super Bowl commercials reflected several trends in marketing, according to Timothy Malefyt, professor of marketing at Fordham’s Gabelli School of Business and program director for the school’s online MS in Strategic Marketing in Communications. With 30-second spots costing a record $8 million to $10 million, brands pursued strategies designed to please the broadest possible audience.
“It seems advertisers are taking fewer risks, promoting their commercials earlier, using big name celebrity draws, and sticking to humorous and nostalgic themes to get the most from their branded advertising,” said Malefyt, who formerly served as VP, director of consumer insights at BBDO Worldwide advertising.
Here are a few trends he spotted in this year’s commercials:
Yearning for the Past
Many of the ads leaned on nostalgia, reviving pop-culture touchstones from Gen X, millennial, and Gen-Z childhoods. According to Malefyt, the trend hints at some ambient anxiety in the cultural zeitgeist.
“Nostalgia surges during periods of collective uncertainty, stress, loss of identity, and rapid social change,” Malefyt said. “Brands are leaning into familiarity, emotional reassurance, cultural continuity, and even unity—as opposed to fragmentation, isolation, or divisiveness—as a mode of consumption.”
Xfinity pushed our nostalgia buttons, he said, by reuniting Jurassic Park stars Laura Dern, Jeff Goldblum, and Sam Neill to imagine how modern Wi-Fi could have saved the park. Budweiser brought back its iconic Clydesdale imagery in a sentimental spot that featured a pony rescuing a baby bird, ending with the ultimate Americana anthem, Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Free Bird.” And Dunkin’ ran a “Good Will Dunkin’” ad that brought together a parade of ‘90s celebrities and parodied an imagined sitcom from that era.
The Mainstreaming of AI
Another major theme was the mainstream arrival of generative AI. Ads from Meta, ChatGPT, and Google Gemini showed AI helping farmers improve crops and families design homes. These messages signal a desire on the part of tech brands to highlight AI as an everyday tool with practical applications in our lives, Malefyt said.
The juxtaposition of these forward-looking ads with those leaning on nostalgia was also striking, he noted, sketching “a future led by new technology as we also pine for a safe and secure past and the comfort of the way things used to be.”
Big Names and Big Budgets
Celebrity cameos were everywhere in this year’s Super Bowl commercials. Instacart paired pop star Benson Boone with Ben Stiller riffing on his Zoolander persona. Even the Coca-Cola polar bear made an appearance—in a Pepsi ad.
Malefyt’s personal favorite was an ad from Uber Eats featuring Matthew McConaughey taunting Bradley Cooper with increasingly absurd conspiracy theories about football secretly existing to sell food, all underscored by Elvis Presley’s “Suspicious Minds.”
The ad deployed self-awareness in a way viewers may find disarming, Malefyt noted.
“The ad sort of exposes the logic of advertising itself—everything is created to over-stimulate consumption—and then sort of ‘winks’ at the audience for knowing this,” Malefyt said. “It’s like, we know you distrust marketing, and it openly acknowledges the manipulation, making viewers feel in on the joke rather than targeted by it.”
These celebrity cameos aren’t cheap, costing between $3 million and $5 million per appearance. That fee is a decrease from the peak of $10 to $15 million, according to the Hollywood Reporter, as brands pull back on their spending for individual celebrities and seek to do more with cameos and ensemble casts, which require fewer hours on set.
Early Releases
Finally, it’s clear that today’s Super Bowl ads are designed to reach audiences beyond those who are tuning into the game.
“This year, most ads were available to audiences early on YouTube and other social platforms to effectively spread out the cost and gain early recognition and consumer engagement before the big Super Bowl show,” said Malefyt, noting that early releases are now a regular part of the strategy.
