1 month ago
Advertisements for the Super Bowl — the title crippled of American shot — are immoderate of the astir watched and astir expensive.
The crippled connected Sunday boasted immoderate 127 cardinal viewers, making it the most-viewed sporting lucifer of the twelvemonth successful the US, arsenic good arsenic the most-watched Super Bowl of each time.
Advertisers wage a premium for the constricted fig of commercialized spots. Some companies shelled retired arsenic overmuch arsenic $4 cardinal for a 30-second slot. The precocious sticker price, arsenic good arsenic the monolithic audience, drives companies to marque their advertisements unique.
But tech manufacture observers person noted 1 peculiar inclination successful Super Bowl ads: If there’s caller tech each implicit the advertisement space, a bubble volition soon pop.
Super Bowl ads and bubbles, from dot-coms to crypto
In January 2000, the dot-com roar was successful afloat plaything owed to the wide adoption of the internet. At the Super Bowl that year, which became dubbed “the dot-com bowl,” 17 antithetic ads were astir the satellite wide web.
One from trading level e-Trade featured a 20-second clip of a dancing chimpanzee, followed by a surface that read, “Well, we conscionable wasted 2 cardinal dollars. What are you doing with your money?”
Two months later, the dot-com bubble began a steep diminution that lasted until October 2002.
The aforesaid happened with the “crypto bowl” successful 2022. At Super Bowl LVI, 4 antithetic crypto companies aired ads: Coinbase, Crypto.com, eToro and FTX.
The now-defunct FTX aired an advertisement with “Seinfeld” showrunner Larry David, encouraging investors not to “miss out” connected crypto. Crypto companies spent an estimated $6.5 cardinal each per 30-second slot that year.
Just months later, the crypto marketplace unraveled. Terra’s stablecoin ecosystem imploded successful May. FTX, Celsius, Voyager Digital and BlockFi were insolvent by the year’s end. Genesis followed successful January 2023.
Related: Crypto figures code connections mentioned successful latest Epstein record release
The pursuing Super Bowl, lone 1 crypto-related advertisement appeared: a non-fungible token promotion related to the video crippled Limit Break. There were nary successful 2024 and 2025.
Coinbase’s sole crypto advertisement astatine Super Bowl LX missed the mark
After a two-year hiatus, 1 large crypto institution has returned to the Super Bowl. Coinbase ran an advertisement successful the signifier of a karaoke sing-along to the Backstreet Boys, which was besides screened connected the Sphere successful Las Vegas.
Not everyone was thrilled. For many, crypto’s representation has not improved since the FTX days. Political streamer Jordan Uhl posted, “From crypto to AI to Trump accounts, each Super Bowl has its ain scam advertisement theme.”
Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management publishes ceremonial ratings of Super Bowl ads and puts them successful 2 categories: touchdowns (successful/good advertisements) oregon fumbles (ineffective/poor advertisements).
The Kellogg survey found that Coinbase’s 2026 advertisement “failed to found a wide transportation to the marque oregon its worth proposition.” It received an “F.”
But the crypto manufacture present has immoderate superior legislative victories nether its belt. Coinbase’s advertisement whitethorn beryllium a awesome that the manufacture volition support promoting its brands connected the largest azygous nighttime for advertizing successful the US.
Related: Crypto PACs unafraid monolithic warfare chests up of US midterms
Do Super Bowl ads awesome an extremity to the AI bubble?
While Crypto.com didn’t marque immoderate crypto-related advertisements, it did announce its caller AI platform, imaginatively named AI.com.
A full of 10 ads astatine this year’s Super Bowl were astir AI. Anthropic boasted its ad-free AI model, Claude. Meta showed off its AI-enabled Oakley astute glasses, and Google’s commercialized featured a parent and lad furnishing their location with Nano Banana Pro, the company’s AI-enabled representation generator.
Amazon debuted its caller Alexa+ successful an advertisement with histrion Chris Hemsworth, successful which helium imagines that AI is retired to get him, either by closing the store doorway connected his caput oregon attempting to drown him successful the pool.
Svedka Vodka’s 2026 advertisement revived its “fembot” quality that was made chiefly with AI. Source: YouTube
The accelerated proliferation of AI tech has coincided with eye-watering institution valuations and uncertainty astir whether firms similar OpenAI volition crook a profit. Now, immoderate observers are wondering if the “AI bowl” was a harbinger of an impending bubble burst.
Gary Smith, an economics prof astatine Pomona College, and Jeffrey Funk, an autarkic advisor with Carnegie Mellon, wrote connected Sunday:
“In this AI bubble, the prices of AI-dependent stocks person go untethered from realistic projections of aboriginal profits. LLM-dependent companies specified arsenic OpenAI and Anthropic are losing tremendous amounts of wealth yet are fixed valuations successful the hundreds of billions of dollars arsenic if they were existent companies making existent profits.”Ads absorption connected onboarding caller users to the technology. Smith and Funk said, “In the lack of profits, the tech bros progressively stress an aged metric that was fashionable during the dot-com bubble: the fig of users, with a caller flavor.”
Ahead of the Super Bowl, bundle developer and researcher Carl Brown said, “I don’t cognize precisely however galore AI commercials are going to beryllium successful the crippled this weekend. I already cognize determination volition beryllium a batch much than it seems similar determination ought to be.”
E-Trade whitethorn person “wasted” $2 cardinal successful 2000, but it was inactive astir to gloat astir surviving the dot-com bust the adjacent year. FTX and different smaller crypto platforms went nether successful 2022, but Coinbase and the Backstreet Boys were playing connected the Vegas Sphere this clip around.
The AI bubble could burst, but if past patterns constituent to anything, a fewer companies volition past — and possibly marque a commercialized astir it.
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