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AI is turning culture into a production shortcut — faster, cheaper and, at times, familiar. But the Super Bowl is one of the last places where brands are reminded that cultural likeness is easy but shared experience is earned.
This year’s game made that distinction clearer than ever. The ads that generated real reaction were not the ones leaning into AI aesthetics or winking at the tech itself. They were the ones that did something more old-fashioned: make people laugh, play up sentiment or reach a collective of America that feels increasingly rare in today’s climate. AI, meanwhile, hovered less as a source of shared delight and more as a point of suspicion — a backdrop to the conversation rather than the moment itself.
The tech was everywhere in the surrounding discourse, just not in the emotional sense of the work. In fact, the term “AI” was mentioned 6,939 times in conversations tied to Super Bowl ads, according to social analytics firm Sprout Social data between Jan. 27 and Feb. 9, with viewers openly debating which spots felt machine-made and what that meant for creativity.
The reactions to specific AI brands underscored the point. Anthropic’s ad drew 41% positive sentiment and about 33,000 engagements on its Instagram post, with ChatGPT appearing 3,829 times as a related keyword. Similarly, OpenAI’s ad saw 44% positive sentiment and roughly 1,600 Instagram engagements, with Anthropic mentioned 3,738 times alongside it. Turns out, much of the conversation framed the ads through the rivalry triggered by Anthropic’s decision to mock OpenAI’s decision to introduce ads to ChatGPT. Viewers were analyzing, not simply reacting to it.
One tech effort broke from that pattern. Oakley’s collaboration with Meta earned 88% positive sentiment, according to the same dataset, with creator iShowSpeed driving more than 1,000 related mentions. The ad travelled more as a creator-led entertainment than as a statement about AI. When the tech receded and personality took over during the ads, the response warmed considerably.
The broader landscape seemed to back that up. Pepsi generated more than 33,000 mentions, according to Sprout Social, making it one of the most discussed brands of the night. Its ad leaned on one of advertising’s most recognizable symbols: rival Coca-Cola’s polar bear. In the spot, the bear participates in Pepsi’s blind taste test, ultimately preferring Pepsi and even finding a fellow fan. The idea was bold but the mechanism was simple — let viewers feel like they were in on the joke. The humor was immediate, the reference widely understood and the payoff required no explanation.
How culture moved around the game reinforced that dynamic. Per social intelligence firm Dig’s analysis of the Super Bowl ads, 86.4% of the content circulating about key moments came from users rather than brands with 97,873 posts generating more than 501 million views two hours before kickoff to two hours after the final whistle. Dig also found that 92.4% of production-related posts favored traditional produced ads featuring real actors and celebrity-led storytelling, reflecting a clear audience preference for human-made creative.
Its Impact Score — which combines sentiment and normalized engagement rate with sentiment weighted most heavily — crowned Poppi (8.51), Tree Hut (7.99) and Raisin Bran (7.21) as top performers, while Meta led the tech category. In Dig’s framework, positive reaction matters more than raw volume so it’s unsurprising these ads struck a chord: they hit all the usual Super Bowl ad triggers: zeitgeist piercing celebrity (Poppi); a memorable creative idea (Tree Hut) and the nostalgia Raisin Bran.
“AI may be the future of content production but this year’s Super Bowl reminded us it’s not the future of connection,” said Ofer Familier, CEO of Dig: “Viewers didn’t just prefer human-made ads. They demanded them. The message is clear. In moments that matter, authenticity beats automation.”
Behavioral data backed that up. According to EDO’s annual Super Bowl Outcomes Ranker, which measures spikes in site visits and brand searches immediately after ads air, the strongest performers leaned into clarity, familiarity and tangible value. Ai.com’s spot drove 9.1 times the engagement of the media Super Bowl ad, Universal Pictures’ “Minions & Monsters” hit 9.09 times and Lay’s ranked third at 7.1 times, fueled by a free chips offer. Dunkin’s nostalgia-heavy “Good Will Dunkin” generated 5 times the median engagement while Budweiser, Cadillac and Netflix also landed well above the midpoint. Even Wegovy led pharmacy at 3.7 times. EDO;s conclusion; recognizable IP, celebrity, nostalgia and straightforward offers drove measurable consumer response.
Notably EDO found there more AI platform ads (seven) than traditional beer and auto ads combined (six) and most AI spots still generated above median outcomes But even there, success came from driving cursory and search behavior — performance signals — rather than dominating the cultural conversation.
Taken together, the data shows a two-track Super Bowl. One track is cultural theater where humor, nostalgia and celebrity drive conversation and positive sentiment. The other is performance, where clarity and utility drive measurable response. AI brands are increasingly active in both but they still struggle to own the first at mass scale.
That contrast points to a growing tension in marketing. AI is lowering the cost of creative output at the exact moment emotional impact is becoming harder to earn.Familiarity is abundant. Shared experience is scare, which is why so many marketers appeared to take more inspiration from the half time show itself.
“I think we can all agree that culture won the Super Bowl,” said Leila Fataar, founder of brand consultancy Platform13. ”Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio isn’t a global phenomenon because he followed the traditional ‘soften your edges, make yourself palatable’ music playbook. He stayed rooted in Puerto Rico. He doesn’t translate or sanitize. His language, politics, humor, sound, style — he keeps all intact, especially now in the face of the current situation in the US. And the world responded. That’s culture-led power. The biggest lesson for brands: Culture-led brands don’t chase scale first. They build deep resonance, with real communities, grounded in lived context, first by adding value to that culture as it emerges.”
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