123 - Our Favorite Ads from the Big Game in 2026

Rich: All right, Zac. The question on everybody’s mind: what were the best ads from the Big Game in 2026? We’ll get into it.

Rich: We had to say “the Big Game” in our promos because you’re not allowed to use “Super Bowl” in advertising in a way that makes it sound like you’re associated with the brand. Not that it would really matter for us—or our audience—but since the podcast is editorial (and blog posts are editorial), we can say “Super Bowl.” So now we’re off the hook and we can jump in.

Rich: Super Bowl. Super Bowl. Super Bowl.

Rich: The game had some decent hits, a lot of misses, and a few that were just like… what the hell was that?

Zac: Honestly, it felt way more toned down than previous years. A lot of it blended together. I don’t know if that was because the game was boring to me, but the game was terrible.

Rich: I watched the first half, didn’t watch the second half. I watched the halftime show and then I was like, yeah… I just don’t really care. It was so slow.

Rich: The ads were partly the highlight. We’re also going to have to talk about all the poop and pee ads, because there was just a lot of that. We had that, we had Manscaped… honestly, that was one of the better ones.

Rich: But first, we’ve got to talk about this cocktail. Zac—tell us about the pineapple martini.

Zac: The pineapple martini was created in 1997 at London’s Met Bar at the Metropolitan Hotel. Ben Reid created it, and one of the big things I read was that it helped kick off this idea of using freshly squeezed juice in martinis—instead of just the more traditional, toned-down martinis.

Zac: They also added lime juice to boost the acidity, and it was pretty famous in the 90s. Would you say it was famous back in the 90s?

Rich: I’ve never heard of it before this—but I would’ve been 26 in 1997.

Rich: I do remember in the early 2000s, fruit-infused vodkas and gins became a big thing at bars—like a big vat of vodka with fresh pineapple in it. That stuff was good and dangerous, because pineapple gets really sweet.

Rich: And martini culture can be intense. Some people are like, it must be gin, it must be vermouth, it must be olives, and that’s it. But things loosened up—and maybe the 90s were when that started.

Rich: Now I kind of want to look up when the lychee martini came around, because I love that one. That’s my favorite of all time.

Zac: I had a really good espresso martini over the weekend—Vietnamese coffee, condensed milk, vodka, and red miso. A little umami going on, and it actually paired really nicely.

Rich: Okay, let’s talk about how to make the pineapple martini.

Rich: You’ll want 1¼ ounces of vodka, 1 ounce of pineapple juice, ¼ ounce of lime juice, and ⅛ ounce of rich simple syrup—which is a 2:1 sugar-to-hot-water mix.

Rich: Garnish with a pineapple wedge—maybe even a little umbrella if you want to commit.

Rich: Add everything to a cocktail shaker with ice, shake until chilled, and strain into a chilled coupe or cocktail glass. Pineapple juice can be pulpy, so you can double-strain it if you want. Garnish and enjoy.

Rich: This one’s from Punchdrink.com.

Zac: It falls under one of their easy shaking recipes.

Rich: Yeah—the hardest part is just getting a pineapple, cutting it, and getting an ounce of juice. Honestly, not that bad. And then you’ve got extra pineapple—make an upside-down cake or something.

Rich: Alright. Let’s take a quick break, and when we come back we’ll talk about the ads—because I don’t know how else to describe it… I just feel like they were mid. Not spectacular.

Rich: I think one of the ads literally leaned into “meh,” and that’s kind of how I feel about most of them.

Rich: We’ll get into it when we get back.

Rich: All right, we’re back. Zac, you’ve got a pretty hot takeaway from the whole thing. Lay it on us.

Zac: The AI ad wars are officially here. There are a lot of big AI companies spending a ton of money to get their name out there. And brands are experimenting with AI too—with very mixed results.

Rich: Very mixed. Hit and miss.

Rich: And honestly, I was surprised. With the economy being tough and politics being divisive, I expected more bighumor. Some brands went that direction, but nothing made me want to spit out my drink laughing—which has definitely happened in past Super Bowls.

Rich: Let’s start with AI. You brought up one that was… weird: Goodwill Duncan. We’ve got to talk about Goodwill Duncan.

Rich: I saw the teaser this morning—which I didn’t catch during the game—and I loved the teaser. It was Ben Affleck pitching it to Jennifer Aniston, Matt LeBlanc, and Jason Alexander. He’s got this old VHS tape, pops it in, and they cut to their reactions. Jennifer Aniston is like, “No one can ever see that.” And he’s like, “It’s fine, it’s fine… it’s only going to air once.”

Rich: The ad itself—I like the concept. The Affleck/Damon rivalry angle. And Affleck with Dunkin just makes sense.

Rich: But there was a line I saw in a review that summed it up: was this AI slop or a CGI nightmare?

Zac: That’s what I was wondering.

Rich: Same. From what I can tell, it was shot with real actors, but they used AI for the de-aging—and it was unnecessary. It felt sloppy.

Zac: It was a little uncanny. I was enjoying it at first, but then I started looking closely and it got in the way. And that’s what happened with a lot of ads: good concept, and then the AI visuals make things cloudy.

Rich: Exactly. Real commercial, AI de-aging—just not clean. And we’ve seen de-aging done well in movies, so it’s not that it can’t be done. This just didn’t feel right.

Rich: Okay—what was the worst AI one for you?

Zac: Svedka. Nightmare fuel. I don’t know what they were trying to do with the message, because making them androids just made it more uncanny and creepy. It was janky. The movement wasn’t natural.

Zac: It felt like they spent all the money on the ad spot and basically nothing on the actual ad.

Rich: Yep. It reminded me of those “AI robots” we’ve seen demoed where it turns out there are people controlling them behind the scenes. This one was just… off. And parts of it were gross—like the way the drinking visuals looked.

Zac: The smile was uncanny—especially with the lipstick. And it didn’t do anything interesting with AI. It didn’t push boundaries. It was just very obviously AI—and not in a good way.

Rich: Another one that made zero sense: Coinbase karaoke.

Zac: Yep.

Rich: The song didn’t fit Coinbase at all. If you’re going to do music, pick something that actually connects to money or currency or something. Everyone I was with was just staring at the screen doing karaoke, and we were trying to guess what it was for. Coinbase wasn’t even on our radar.

Zac: Same. It felt like they were chasing nostalgia—hoping people would sing along and then catch the brand at the end. It was cringy and uncomfortable. I hated it.

Rich: And the graphics felt like they were straight out of 1986. For how long it was, it was brutal.

Zac: It also didn’t make me want to look up Coinbase. I already knew it was crypto-related, but it didn’t intrigue me. It made me want to know who made it so I could avoid them.

Rich: Another weird one: the William Shatner “Shat” ad.

Zac: Yeah.

Rich: The gimmick was basically: “How many poop jokes can we cram into one commercial?” It almost went so far over the top that it wrapped around to being funny—but it didn’t quite get there for me. And I can’t believe Shatner did it.

Zac: There were a lot of weird ones that just missed. Also—ai.com with “ai.com/elon” and “ai.com/this.” I don’t even know what ai.com is, but it was forgettable. And if you put Elon in there, I’m not going to want to search it.

Rich: Yeah. There was another AI one that was trying to feel like an Apple-style ad with a bunch of famous people, and it just didn’t land for me.

Rich: Okay—those were some least favorites. Let’s jump into the good stuff. Zac, what’s your first favorite?

Zac: Budweiser. I grew up watching those Budweiser Super Bowl ads, and I always loved the Clydesdales. As soon as I saw the horses, I was like, okay—this is Budweiser.

Zac: And then the Clydesdale colt raising the baby eagle? That hit on nostalgia hard. I loved the storytelling with minimal dialogue. It was simple, and it made the brand instantly recognizable.

Rich: Budweiser always goes for emotion and heart, and this one did that well. Not their all-time best, but still strong. And the little funny moments—like the keg stuff—were cute too.

Rich: Leonard Skinnerd even tweeted about it—basically saying they loved how their song was used in the commercial, which is a nice stamp of approval.

Zac: Another honorable mention for me was the Pepsi polar bears. A lot of people didn’t get it, but I thought it was really funny—especially the Coldplay concert part. It was close to being great, but it didn’t quite make my top list.

Rich: If people missed the first few seconds—where the polar bear does the blind taste test and picks Pepsi—they were lost for the entire ad. And that’s the risk: people look down at their phone for two seconds and miss the setup.

Rich: Okay, my favorite might be controversial, but it made me laugh: Manscaped.

Zac: Oh yeah.

Rich: The whole original song, the characters, the way it tied directly to the product—it was funny. And the line at the end—“You won’t miss your hair, but your hair might miss you”—that one got me.

Zac: That was a really good one. And yeah, Bud was more of a feel-good favorite for me.

Rich: Alright—your second favorite?

Zac: Pokémon. I was surprised to see it in the Super Bowl lineup. They had a bunch of celebrities—Lady Gaga, Trevor Noah, Charles Leclerc, Jisoo—and I didn’t totally get what was happening at first.

Zac: But then you realize they’re describing a Pokémon, and it starts showing up behind them. It was a cool way to highlight how many Pokémon there are and how distinct they are. And it hit nostalgia for me—Pokémon was huge when I was growing up.

Zac: Plus, it ties into Pokémon’s 30th anniversary, which is awesome. And it’s fun seeing celebrities talk about their favorite Pokémon—kids and people my age probably loved that.

Rich: That’s the power of nostalgia. It’s wild that Pokémon is old enough to be nostalgia now, but it is. And Pokémon Go kept the brand super alive for a new generation too.

Rich: Also—Super Bowl movie trailers. I always like those. They’re short because the airtime is expensive, and then they’re like “full trailer online.” I didn’t go look them up immediately, but I probably should.

Zac: Yeah.

Rich: And the real winners of the Super Bowl: the Backstreet Boys.

Zac: Oh yeah, 100%.

Rich: They made bank. Multiple commercials, song usage—especially Coinbase. They basically got paid for the song.

Zac: They didn’t have to do anything.

Rich: Exactly. And honestly, some of them have aged really well… and some have not.

Zac: I hear that a lot—some are still really good-looking and others are like… oof.

Rich: Yep. Rough times.

Rich: So: horrible game. Mid ads. Nothing that stood out in a crazy way.

Zac: Yep.

Rich: What do the kids say… the ads were “six-seven”? Is that how that works?

Zac: Pretty much.

Rich: That whole “six-seven” thing was in the Goodwill Duncan teaser too—that made me laugh.

Rich: And I know we’re not here to talk halftime show, but I thought it was phenomenal. Amazing energy. I like Latin music anyway, and Bad Bunny is fun.

Rich: The thing that blew my mind was all the trees on the field—and then I found out they were people.

Zac: I saw that after and I was like, that makes sense. I love it. I didn’t understand how they got everything out there so fast.

Rich: The storytelling was great, too. But also: if you were sitting low, you couldn’t see much. That halftime show was for TV—100%.

Zac: The messaging was really cool. It felt wholesome. Honestly, probably the most wholesome, well-meaning halftime show we’ve had in a while.

Rich: Totally. And I watched a replay with translation—really poignant. Definitely a love letter to Puerto Rico, and honestly to the Americas as a whole.

Rich: Alright, that’s our take. I think everyone’s pretty united on the ads: people hated the sloppy AI stuff, people loved Budweiser. Manscaped is a little mixed—some people get grossed out.

Rich: Also: we didn’t even fully unpack all the pee ads. There were like three. And the poop ads. And Liquid IV was kind of gross. I’m learning Americans are dehydrated and unhealthy.

Zac: That one surprised me. But I did like the tight end ad—at first I didn’t know what it was for, and then they brought up prostate awareness and I was like, okay—message received.

Rich: Prostate cancer awareness—yeah. That’s important, and it was done in a way that actually got the straight male audience to pay attention without being gross or offensive.

Zac: Some were good, some were very middle of the road, and then the AI-generated stuff—like Svedka—was just bad.

Rich: And that’s a wrap on the superb owl.

Zac: Yep—that’s an episode. You can find our agency at antideut71.com and all of our socials are there as well. If you have a question you’d like to send our way, head to CTApodcast.live to shoot us an email—or even better, leave us a voice message on our hotline at 402-718-9971. Your question might make it into a future episode of the podcast.

Rich: Yep—and quick note: the DNS for CTApodcast.live was kind of jacked up until about a month ago, but we fixed it and it resolves quickly now. I just tested it while you were doing the closing and it works.

Rich: So if you tried it in the past and couldn’t get there, try it again—we should be good.

Rich: Alright, I’ll see you next time, Zac.

Zac: See you next week.