An overview of the 2026 Super Bowl TV ads
On Feb. 8, the 60th annual Super Bowl marked its place in pop-culture history during an age of political tension, new technologies, and mass-media icons. The “Big Game” itself is the annual championship game for the American National Football League (NFL), this year seeing the Seattle Seahawks versus the New England Patriots. The Super Bowl is not just a game. It is a major cultural event on television where most Americans, and now countless viewers worldwide, tune in to experience not only the game, but also the now iconic halftime show and million-dollar commercials.
Super Bowl commercials became a big deal in the early 2000s, before the digital era, when television was a main source of media. To have a commercial during the Super Bowl meant to advertise to almost every person in the United States and beyond. As a result, the stakes are high and companies must create stand-out advertisements which can cost up to US$10 million. As the rise of social media caused shorter attention spans, commercials started to use specific tactics to keep the attention of viewers. This includes elements of nostalgia, humour, emotion, and cameos from recognizable figures such as global celebrities.
This year was no exception. Using a compilation of reviews and rankings from sources such as Billboard and USA Today, here are descriptions of the top three advertisements from Super Bowl LX and why they stood out of the crowd.
In third place, Xfinity Rogers, a cable provider, used nostalgia to capture their audiences. The commercial puts the viewer right into a scene from the classic 1993 Jurassic Park movie. This scene includes the original film’s actors Sam Neill, Laura Dern, Jeff Goldblum, Samuel L. Jackson, and Richard Attenborough,all looking as young as they were in the original film. Xfinity interrupts the scene with a happy, peaceful ending where their Internet saves the day. Each actor cheerfully enjoys the dinosaur-themed amusement park without real dinosaurs, mixing light and ironic humour with nostalgia for the well-known movies.
Holding second place was an ad for a device using artificial intelligence (AI). There were countless ads from artificial intelligence (AI) companies and products, demonstrating the transition into a new technological era. However, the one that was rated best was Amazon’s Alexa Plus advertisement, featuring Australian actor Chris Hemsworth and his spouse, Spanish actress and model Elsa Pataky. The ad demonstrates the device’s new features, using humour to acknowledge common fears of AI. Amazon capitalized off Hemsworth’s fame and propensity to action scenes, such as being thrown through a wall by an explosion.
For first place, viewers seemed to agree that Pringles, an American potato chip snack company, stood out with their ad featuring pop star Sabrina Carpenter. Carpenter leaned into her signature playful humour by declaring she “needs a man,” then proceeded to build a man out of Pringles. Like her hit album, the ad was short and sweet, allowing for a quick laugh, a memorable phrase, and mental image of Carpenter’s Pringle man getting swamped and eaten by fans.
There were many more Super Bowl commercials that did well with fans. Dunkin’ Donuts took the nostalgia and laughter of 90s sitcoms, creating a Good Will Hunting parody featuring actors from Seinfeld, Friends, and The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. Pepsi leaned into the popular “Coca-Cola vs. Pepsi” debate with a nod to an infamous pop culture event at a recent Coldplay concert. American tennis icon Serena Williams was criticised for promoting Ro’s weight loss drug. Several AI products and companies promoted themselves, including Anthropic’s Claude chatbot, Microsoft Copilot, Oakley Meta, OpenAI, and AI.com. Critics noted that these ads were well-received as they highlighted the use of AI in everyday life, rather than focusing on technological or marketing aspects. Overall, the Super Bowl LX commercials stayed relevant to 2026, and used marketing tactics of attention-grabbing and nostalgic elements to engage a digital audience.