Super Bowl LX analysis shows tech ads underperformed others by 47%, highlighting why emotion, clarity and storytelling matter more than features.
I once spoke with a marketer at a B2C brand who told me that if they can make a consumer feel something, they’ve done their job.
As a B2B CMO, my job is done when I’ve hit my numbers. That difference isn’t about one side being right or wrong — it’s a difference in perspective. Tech and CPG marketers don’t think alike.
This year, that theory played out clearly on the Super Bowl LX stage.
At Zappi, we tested every ad that aired during the game — more than 65 spots in total. Tech brands made up just under a third of the lineup, spanning AI companies, devices, platforms, and apps. When we looked at overall performance using a sales-impact score that captures distinctiveness, brand recall, and purchase impact, tech ads underperformed non-tech ads by an average of 47 percent.
That’s a jarring gap. And it points to a simple conclusion: tech just doesn’t get the Super Bowl. Let’s look at the good, the bad, and the ugly of tech at Super Bowl LX.
Why Tech Ads Miss the Mark
Expectations matter
Super Bowl viewers show up primed for humor, spectacle, and the occasional emotional ad that pulls at the heartstrings. Categories like beer, snacks, and entertainment are “native” to the game because they naturally tap into these shared cultural feelings. Tech often leads with features instead of feeling, asking viewers to think at the exact moment they’re ready to feel.
Where technology can excel is in removing pain points for consumers. It’s less emotionally charged and more functional. Even within that constraint, Grubhub stood out by solving a familiar frustration: excessive fees. At a time when many consumers are feeling pinched, Grubhub used its Clue-styled spot featuring George Clooney to position the brand as the hero — the one willing to “eat the fees” on orders over $50. The message was clear, memorable, and accessible, and it showed up in performance: above-norm distinctiveness and more than double the benchmark for laughter.
By contrast, Genspark fell flat. On the surface, the ad checked familiar Super Bowl boxes — a celebrity cameo, a self-aware joke, a wink to the audience — but it stopped short of clearly stating what it is. In Genspark’s focus on being relatable, consumers left feeling confused about what it actually does. On a night when brands are expected to show their best selves, Genspark used its airtime to gesture at scale and disruption without clarifying relevance. The result felt lightweight, especially compared with brands that translated innovation into tangible results.
Focus and cues misfire
Tech ads tend to veer in one of two directions: they either drift so far into abstraction that the product disappears, or they try so hard to be part of the spectacle that they miss the point entirely.
Squarespace leaned heavily into arthouse visuals. The spot was visually compelling, with real star power — but did it make anyone want to buy a domain during the game? Not really.
Salesforce went the opposite route, anchoring its ad in internet culture by centering it on MrBeast and gamifying the visuals with a million-dollar giveaway. MrBeast is instantly recognizable to my kids, but far less relevant to people who actually buy enterprise technology. Advertising to kids to influence purchase decisions is an age-old practice — just not in SaaS. The idea landed, just not with an audience that would ever convert.
Across the AI category, the issue wasn’t technical depth — it was vanity. Broad use cases layered with thin jokes, frenetic energy, and unsettling music dominated OpenAI’s ads. Others, like Anthropic, spent more time signaling scale and taking shots at competitors than actually appealing to potential users. Innovation became noise.
You can see how differently this plays out within tech itself. The Oakley and Meta collaboration landed because the feature at its core had clear, exciting implications. Viewers didn’t just see something futuristic — they understood that the product unlocked possibilities. That clarity made the brand easy to consider both now and later, placing the ad in the top tier of performance.
Emotional resonance beats prestige
Consumers remember stories, not specs.
Too many tech brands chase prestige or vague signals of “innovation” without anchoring them in a relatable human truth. The result is often admiration without action — or indifference altogether.
One brand that stood out was Google, with its Gemini ad. Unlike other AI spots, Gemini avoided jokes and spectacle in favor of showing real applications — from dropping photos into a chatbot to visualizing life changes in concrete ways. While the ad still struggled with brand recall, it resonated emotionally: love scores exceeded benchmark levels, suggesting the message connected even if the branding lagged.
The takeaway isn’t that tech should avoid the Super Bowl. It’s that the Super Bowl demands a different kind of discipline. This is a moment built for people, not products. Even the most advanced technology needs an emotional hook to earn attention.
Tech can succeed on this stage — but only when ambition is balanced with accessibility, and amid the spectacle, you can provide clarity.
