Ad Age is counting down to Super Bowl LIX. In the days leading up to the game, which will air on Fox on Feb. 9, 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.

AI arrives

It took a while, but artificial intelligence is finally showing up in Super Bowl campaigns. Meta this week revealed its two Super Bowl ads starring Chris Hemsworth and Chris Pratt that plug its Ray-Ban glasses equipped with an AI assistant. Google today released an extended cut of its ad showing a father using its Gemini Live AI assistant to prepare for a job interview. GoDaddy came out with its ad that promotes its Airo AI tool in a collab with Walton Goggins’ Goggle Glasses. Salesforce is highlighting its “Agentforce” suite of autonomous AI agents meant to aid tasks in service, sales, marketing and commerce. One of its two Super Bowl ads is a repeat—the “Dining Al Fiasco” spot with Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson that has already gotten extensive airtime. We are still waiting for the second ad.

OpenAI will also run a Super Bowl ad. The Wall Street Journal first reported the buy, which Ad Age confirmed. The investment comes after OpenAI in December hired former Coinbase marketer Kate Rouch as its first CMO. (Coinbase ran a Super Bowl ad in 2022.) In a December interview, Rouch told Ad Age that promoting artificial general intelligence as a benefit to all of humanity will be a key part of telling OpenAI’s story. Perplexity had been in talks with Fox about a Super Bowl buy, but ended up spending some $3 million for a social media series filmed in a Cybertruck in Super Bowl host city New Orleans. Ad Age’s Asa Hiken has more on those plans.

To keep track of all the advertisers running national spots in the game, bookmark Ad Age’s regularly updated Super Bowl ad chart. And for all the latest teasers, check out Ad Age’s Creativity’s daily roundups and sign up for the Creativity Weekly newsletter.

Girl math and giveaways

Thirty-seven Super Bowl ads have now been released, including some in extended form, and 56 brands have confirmed ad buys. Today’s releases include Ram, which is putting a new spin on “Goldilocks and the Three Bears”; DoorDash, which has Nate Bargatze doing girl math; and Cirkul, which announced a big giveaway involving 100,000 starter kits for its water bottles with flavored pouches.

Super Bowl giveaways are, of course, nothing new. Shopping rewards app Fetch is promoting a $1.2 million sweepstakes in its ad this year. Last year, DoorDash ran a contest giving away products from every brand that ran a Super Bowl ad. In 2021, Mountain Dew gave viewers a chance to earn $1 million by guessing the number of soda bottles that appeared in its ad. And back in 2014, Esurance dangled $1.5 million in front of viewers with a post-game ad promoting a Twitter sweepstakes.

The Eagle has landed (in an ad)

One of the biggest stars in the game will also get time in an ad. Philadelphia Eagle Saquon Barkley is starring in a spot for financial operations platform Ramp. While it is not a Super Bowl ad by the strictest definition, meaning it won’t run on linear TV during the game nationally, the brand is backing it with a substantial buy that includes 12 local markets. It will also run on Fox’s pregame coverage, as well as during the game on streaming (Tubi and the NFL app). The ad, which promotes Ramp’s expense reporting tools, was produced by Even/Odd and was conceived, shot, and finished in seven days, ending Tuesday, according to the brand.

Night shoot

Speaking of fast work, the creators behind the winner of Doritos’ “Crash the Super Bowl” ad contest—Dylan Bradshaw and Nate Norell—were pretty speedy. The duo conceived the alien-themed ad in a week-and-a-half and then took just two weeks to film and edit the entire project. Ad Age’s Gillian Follett interviewed the creators this week and found out about how the shoot involved an all-nighter at a cabin in the California mountains. “There were animals everywhere and it was cold. We were in the thick of it, quite literally,” Bradshaw said.

Stay tuned

As the game draws near, Ad Age will continue delivering the latest breaking ad news, trends and analysis. Below, a sample of some of our other coverage this week:

Wellness, GLP-1 weight loss drugs hit the Super Bowl

What viewers want and don’t want in Super Bowl ads

Unsung Super Bowl ad heroes

The 10 most memorable Super Bowl ads of the past decade

This week in Super Bowl history

Super Bowl XXXIX was played on this date in 2005 when the Patriots beat the Eagles in Jacksonville, Florida. Fox had the game and charged $2.4 million for 30-second commercials.

Advertisers included GoDaddy, whose racy spot featured a barely clothed woman testifying before Congress as her shirt struggled to stay on her; it was apparently supposed to be a spoof of the previous year’s halftime “wardrobe malfunction” involving Janet Jackson, according to Ad Age’s Super Bowl Archive, which notes that GoDaddy continued “ginning up Super Bowl controversy, claims of censorship and general PR stunts all the way through Super Bowl XLIX in 2015.” 

GoDaddy is in this year’s game with a relatively tame spot—unless you are offended by AI.

For a complete look at Big Game commercial history, check out Ad Age’s Super Bowl ad archive.