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Now that the dust has settled around the 60-plus Super Bowl ad spots rolled out this year, it’s time to reflect on the best and worst commercials from Super Bowl 2026.

Anthropic took a jab at OpenAI’s ad product launch and T-Mobile and Coinbase used The Backstreet Boys top play up millennial nostalgia. Meanwhile, Dunkin’ and Xfinity stacked celebs in their ad spots (jury’s out whether generative AI or CGI was used to make the celebs look younger.) All said, a few things were clear: AI platforms like OpenAI and Google are becoming Super Bowl ad regulars, celebs are still the go-to Big Game strategy and in a high-stakes cultural landscape, and sports betting is the new American past time.

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As YouTube moves further upstream for TV ad dollars, it’s careful not to weaken the lower, mid-funnel mechanics that make those budgets defensible.

Google’s sales reps are now being incentivized to prioritize pitching YouTube, according to three ad execs Digiday spoke with in exchange of candor for anonymity. In those pitches, YouTube, especially its Demand Gen offering — a Google Ads campaign type focused on discovery and mid-funnel influence — is being framed less like a glossy TV buy and more like a direct rival to Meta when marketers want lower, mid-funnel performance, the execs said.

It’s a move that partly hinges on Youtube Shorts, the short-form format built to compete with TikTok and Meta’s Reels. Shorts gives YouTube the inventory and user behavior patterns that performance marketers expect, helping the platform argue it can deliver both brand-scale reach on TV screens and response-driven outcomes inside the same ecosystem — or the middle of the funnel. Paid social media expert Shamsul Chowdhury said he has heard this narrative from Google reps, adding that Google has long struggled to navigate the so-called “messy middle.” Demand Gen, he noted, was intended as the company’s solution.

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