The Digiday Podcast Digiday ranks the best and worst Super Bowl ads of 2026
Feb 10, 2026
Sunny Bonnell, co-founder and CEO of Motto and brand strategy expert, helps rank Super Bowl 2026 ads. She breaks down nostalgia plays, AI-company spots, celebrity and influencer uses. Short takes on which ads achieved brand recall and which ones missed the mark.
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Three Dominant Ad Archetypes
- Tim Peterson grouped ads into earnest/cringy, nostalgia/celebrity, and patriotic 'America is great' categories.
- He argued the patriotic spots felt tone-deaf given recent national traumas and didn't land for him.
Show Product, Don't Just Promise
- Sunny praised OpenAI's ad for showing utilitarian product use with Apple-like storytelling.
- She criticized Meta for innovation theater that failed to give viewers a clear takeaway or call to action.
Anthropic Jab Missed By Casual Viewers
- Kamiko McCoy liked Anthropic's jab at OpenAI but noted casual viewers might miss the reference.
- She gave Google Gemini an honorable mention for humanizing AI through relatable parent-child storytelling.