2026 Superbowl Ads: The Good, The Bad, and the Propaganda

BY: ETHAN CHAHINE / STAFF WRITER

On Feb. 8, 2026, the Seattle Seahawks and the New England Patriots battled it out in San Francisco to see who would be the Superbowl LX champion. 

This year's Superbowl was the second most watched Superbowl, only losing out to last year's Superbowl, which reached a peak of 137.8 million viewers (NBC). This makes the Superbowl the most viewed television program annually in the United States. 

One of the defining features of the Superbowl watching experience is the advertisements that play during the broadcast. Due to the volume of people watching, the cost of a Superbowl ad has a hefty price tag of up to $8 million (USA Today). This has led to many companies opting out of producing an ad for the Superbowl this year.

However in spite of this, there continued to be some good and creative Superbowl ads, as well as some that were not so good.

Fun advertisements are typically a staple of the Superbowl. However this year it has become overrun with ads for crypto, AI, and other advertisements with disturbing implications. 

Ritz befell controversy online due to their advertisement which features two people discussing raiding an island party. Following the recent release of the Epstein Files, this advertisement was in very poor taste and out of touch with recent events (Inc).

Ring featured an ad that displayed a new feature that some critics are deeming “Orwellian”. A new “Search Party” feature was displayed which essentially allows the footage from your Ring camera to share to neighbors devices to find missing pets. People are critical of the feature, as this level of surveillance is almost an invasion of privacy as this could hypothetically be used to track not just pets, but people (Futurism).

AI use is becoming uncomfortably prominent in the Superbowl. What was once a fairly amusing display of advertisements made by creative teams is increasingly becoming generated by AI. Approximately 23% of advertisements in the 2026 Superbowl program contained AI by either utilizing it for production or promoting an AI product (AdWeek). 

The over abundance of ads for AI was disheartening as it made the ads feel as corporate as they really are. Human creativity was overshadowed by AI for a large portion of the superbowl. Within just the first quarter of the Superbowl, Athrophic’s chatbot Claude received 2 advertisements.

Pokémon featured an ad for their 30th anniversary in which several celebrities including Lady Gaga and Trevor Noah naming their favorite Pokémon. This was both a fun way to promote the series and a breath of fresh air from the surrounding AI ads that felt very heartless and sterile.

Dove also featured a very quality ad that shared a good message about promoting body positivity as well as celebrating women in sports. The ad depicted many different women from diverse backgrounds and body types which aided in the inclusivity of the message being promoted due to the statistics shared in the commercial about women often being ridiculed for these aspects of their life.

Pepsi also featured a very clever ad about a polar bear, typically being their rival, Coca-Cola’s mascot choosing Pepsi over Coke. Visually the ad was very sound and featured no AI despite their competition opting to use AI in the production of their holiday ad (Futurism).

The state of Superbowl ads are becoming more and more bleak as creativity is being stripped from the ads and AI is becoming increasingly more commonplace than previous years. However, the more human and more creative side of the adverts continues to break through.