The Most Watched Broadcast in History and A Tale of Two Influencer Campaigns
Happy Friday, everyone! This week we’re going to look back at a few of the highlights from the most watched broadcast in history, Super Bowl 59. We’ll also dig into how influencer marketing can work hard for a brand, or go terribly wrong. Let’s get to it!
Super Bowl 59 Is the Most-Watched Ever With 127.7MM Viewers (AdWeek - LINK)
TL;DR – Last week’s Super Bowl wasn’t just the most watched Super Bowl ever, but the most watched television broadcast ever. Tubi, which streamed the game for free, contributed roughly 14MM viewers to Fox’s record-breaking total. Here are a few post-game highlights:
Super Bowl 2025 ad review—the best and worst commercials (AdAge – LINK) – There is no shortage of “best of” commercial lists but I thought this one had some decent commentary. I also happen to agree with their favorite ad from the evening, Google’s “Dream Job” spot. Another good list is USA Today’s Ad Meter which crowned Budweiser as their champion (USA Today Ad Meter – LINK.)
AI Takes the Spotlight During Super Bowl 59 (AdWeek – LINK) – Like last year, AI was featured in a number of ads. GoDaddy and Google both demonstrated how their AI helps users with real world applications. Meta promoted their AI-powered sunglasses while OpenAI humbly positioned ChatGPT as the next step in humanity’s evolutionary journey.
Super Bowl 2025 - How Brands Showed Up on Social Media (AdAge – LINK) – Many of the brands advertising during the game also extended their campaigns to social while others got in on some friendly brand banter with one another. One of the most common themes of the evening was brands referencing Kendrick Lamar’s halftime performance and using the image of him smiling at the camera as inspiration for countless memes.
Retail Media Networks are Becoming a Bigger Part of the Super Bowl Advertising Puzzle (Modern Retail – LINK) – It should come as no surprise that as RMNs grow, their role during tentpole moments like the Super Bowl is also growing. For brands looking to get a bite out of the $18.6B of Super Bowl-related purchases, retail media is a way to potentially seal the deal.
Matt’s Hot Take™ - The Super Bowl is a massive event, but marketers need to contend with dozens of brands competing for the same attention. One of the macro trends to emerge over the past few years is brands creating larger activations around the game vs only running an ad. The way I see it, in 2025, putting all of your eggs in the basket of a singular (expensive) :30 ad is the marketing equivalent of lighting prayer candles with $100 bills. The brands that continue to do it best were the ones who treated the Super Bowl as a tentpole moment inside of a larger, holistic activation across the entire consumer experience.
A Tale of Two Influencer Campaigns (LINKS BELOW!)
TL:DR – Influencer marketing has become an incredibly important part of most brand communications plans. However, while influencer activations have the potential to be incredibly impactful, if executed poorly they have the potential to damage a brand. Here are two examples of executions that at face value are somewhat similar but in practice couldn’t be more different:
The Good: Dick's Sporting Goods Is Putting Creators at the Front of Its Social Campaigns (AdWeek – LINK) – The sporting goods retailer is expanding a program that gives young athletes a 10-month contract to create and share social content that can be also used on the retailer’s own channels. They’ll also be tapped for branded content shoots. Creators will receive monthly gift cards so they’re able to buy products to feature in their content. The creators will also get to attend monthly sessions covering best practices for influencer marketing and will receive mentorship from athletes with strong social media presences.
The Not So Good: Poppi’s Influencer Vending Machine Backlash - What Marketers Can Learn (AdAge – LINK) – Poppi was one of the brands that invested behind a commercial during this year’s Super Bowl. And like any smart brand trying to make their $7-8MM investment go farther, they planned activations around the game. Notably, Poppi was one of the few brands to leverage creators in their big game spot but that’s not all they did with creators. The brand also sent hot pink vending machines to roughly three dozen famous influencers for their watch parties. However, this was not received well by the masses as people were put off by a bunch of already-wealthy macro influencers getting what appeared to be an extravagant gift (although Poppi claims they were collecting the machines to be use in other events.) Throwing gasoline on the fire, rival beverage brand Olipop took to the comment section of these influencer posts to stir up the conversation. Yikes. However, an opportunity still exists for Poppi to get this right as consumers have been voicing what they’d prefer to see the brand do going forward. It will be interesting to watch if they tap into social listening and adapt their future campaigns accordingly.
Matt’s Hot Take™ - I always like to think about influencer marketing as a way to not only create authentic moments for your brand, but as also a means to create a real value exchange between brands and creators. The Dick’s Sporting Goods case is a good example of this. They are truly supporting young athletes in an ownable way that should shine through in their content. Poppi, on the other hand, took an approach that was seen as an over-the-top gifting stunt. There is nothing wrong with working with macro influencers, but this could have been an opportunity to mix in more micro creators or just regular folks in a thoughtful way to connect with more of their fans. As brands look to create excitement and buzz around their activations, it’s important to be mindful of the fine line between “exclusivity” and “exclusion.”
Quick Hits
Fox Plans to Launch New Streaming Service by Year-End (Wall Street Journal - LINK) – While Fox owns the popular free-streaming service Tubi and it’s nearly 100MM monthly active users, they haven’t moved as quickly into the paid-streaming world as of yet. That is potentially changing as the network is planning on launching a subscription service later this year which would house content from both their sports and news programming. With streaming continuing to grow as a consumer behavior, Fox getting into streaming was a “when” not an “if.”
WhatsApp Debuts New ‘Viewing Gallery’ Chat in Partnership with Offball (AdWeek - LINK) – WhatApp is launching a new experience called “The Chat” which will build off their “Communities” feature where users participate in large group chats based on shared interests. However, in “The Chat”, users will be able to follow a curated group chat that includes personalities like creators, celebrities, and athletes. Fans will also be able to engage with the chat through emojis and reactions—though not comments. The feature was launched during the NBA’s All-Star Weekend and will be tested a few more times in the first half of the year before potentially rolling out more broadly. This is an interesting way to try to hijack second-screen attention during live events, but we’ll have to monitor user adoption to understand if the platform can achieve scale.
Amazon Kills ‘Inspire,’ its TikTok-Style Feed for Discovering Products (TechCrunch - LINK) – To me, this was a great example of a combining a real consumer insight (consumers trust influencers for product recommendations) with overly optimistic hopes and dreams (that consumers are going to start browsing creator content on Amazon vs the social channels where they already consume content.) None of this actually made sense and I’m honestly surprised the platform lasted as long as it did. However, the eComm giant has made progress in many other areas including partnerships with social platforms to enable checkout as well as their creator storefronts which have become ubiquitous features in creator social posts. Amazon is still an incredibly important part of the creator economy, but as more of an enabler vs “trying to make fetch happen” as a primary platform.
