Super Bowl alert—what we know so far about the 2024 Big Game

Ad Age is counting down to Super Bowl LVIII. In the weeks leading up to the game, which will air on CBS on Feb. 11, Ad Age will bring you breaking news, analysis and first looks at the high-stakes, Big Game commercials—all in our Super Bowl newsletter. Sign up right here to get them via email. Who’s in? DoorDash is the latest brand to confirm a Super Bowl ad buy, bringing the total to 22 that have announced their plans. That includes seven rookie Big Game advertisers—BetMGM, Nerds, Etsy, Drumstick, PepsiCo’s Starry, Popeyes and Kawasaki. Ten brands are returning after appearing in last year’s game: Coors Light, Hellmann’s, Pringles, M&M’s, Temu, Squarespace, TurboTax, FanDuel, Doritos and DoorDash. Brands coming back after sitting at least one year off include Oreo (2013), BMW (2022), Dove (2015), Mtn Dew (2021), and Reese’s (2020). To keep track of all the advertisers running national spots in the game, bookmark Ad Age’s regularly updated Super Bowl ad chart. All eyes on Goodby—and Scorsese Turning to the agency scorecard, Goodby, Silverstein & Partners leads all shops with four spots, including the Kawasaki ad, which marks a rare appearance in the game for a so-called powersports brand. Wieden+Kennedy, whose Portland office was added to the DoorDash roster, has two spots (it is also handling the FanDuel ad, which will once again feature Rob Gronkowski attempting a field goal), while so far no other agency has more than one. There is one in-house ad—Squarespace. The brand enlisted Martin Scorsese to direct the spot, marking the Hollywood icon’s Big Game directorial debut. (Although he appeared in a spot for Coca-Cola in 2020.) Who’s out? While the game will be held in Las Vegas, the betting capital of America, one sports gambling brand is not coming back, at least not for an in-game ad: DraftKings confirmed this week it is sitting out the 2024 game, ending three straight years of advertising during the Super Bowl. For more on DraftKings and other pigskin marketing news, check out our continuously updated football marketing blog. This year’s game could be light on auto brands—so far only BMW has confirmed a spot, unless you count Kawasaki, which seems poised to possibly plug a new off-roading vehicle. Stellantis and General Motors, both of which ran ads in last year’s game, are not coming back. GM’s move comes as it takes a fresh look at its marketing approach under new Chief Marketing Officer Norm de Greve. Candy rush But while the game might be lacking sheet metal, it will get plenty of sugar. Five candy and sweets brands have kicked their marketing into high gear with Super Bowl ads, and more could be coming. Ad Age examined the trend this week, with experts telling us that consumer appetite for sweets could be growing as people deal with rising stress levels (just don’t tell your doctor). “There’s the feeling of, ‘The world was nicer when I was younger’ and people want to indulge in that,” said Marcia Mogelonsky, senior director of insights for food and drink at Mintel. Nickelodeon confusion Three of those sweets brands have confirmed they will run their ads on the kids-friendly broadcast of the game airing on Nickelodeon: Nerds, Reese’s and M&M’s. But overall, brands seem less than enthused, or just a little bit confused, about the ad-buying process for the Paramount network, as Ad Age reported this week. “[The Nickelodeon game] felt like such a second, third priority for them,” said one media buyer. “It was more CBS proper and then the Paramount+ stream, and Nickelodeon was so much further back.” Oreo VP Michelle Deignan is among the speakers at Ad Age’s virtual Super Bowl event on Feb. 6. Register and learn more at AdAge.com/SuperBowlPlaybook. This day in Super Bowl history Super Bowl IX was played on this day in 1975 when the Steelers beat the Vikings in a low-scoring affair at Tulane Stadium in New Orleans carried by NBC. Advertisers included Masterlock, which plugged its locks by showing them surviving shots from high-powered rifles. It was an approach the brand took in several Super Bowls—and a successful one at that, as documented by the Milwaukee Sentinel in a 1994 account of the brand’s Super Bowl ads, cited in Ad Age’s Super Bowl Ad Archive, which quoted an ad director saying, “Whenever the commercial appeared, within days, we’d get a phone call generally from a newspaper reporter somewhere, calling to find out what we used. We’d wait and watch, and sure enough, within a week or two, some story would appear on how he’d measure off the 40 yards, load and shoot that sucker, and by golly, it held together. It was fantastic publicity. ... I often wondered how many hundreds of locks were sold because of people shooting at them.” For a complete look at Big Game commercial history, check out Ad Age's Super Bowl ad archive.

Super Bowl alert—what we know so far about the 2024 Big Game

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