A 30-second window at the Super Bowl can cost brands millions, but the real price is paid in public memory. For advertisers, the NFL championship is less a marketing opportunity and more a high-wire act. One spot can crystallize cultural relevance overnight; another can dissolve just as quickly into confusion or indifference.

While the gridiron determines champions through points, commercials are measured through recall, resonance, and risk. And in 2026, as always, not every brand walked away victorious.

And as the dust settles on Super Bowl LX, 2026, marketing experts have sorted which commercials soared, and which stumbled.

Each year, analysts at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management evaluate the Super Bowl’s advertising lineup, grading commercials on strategic effectiveness rather than spectacle alone. In 2026, Google's Gemini emerged as the panel’s top performer. At the opposite end sat Coinbase, which drew the panel’s most severe critique.

The cryptocurrency company received an F grade for its karaoke-themed advertisement set to a Backstreet Boys track. While musically familiar, the spot struggled to communicate its core service, likely leaving viewers with recognition but little understanding. Ai.com remained slightly above the low bar, but also landed an F.

Right above the F graders, several brands populated the D tier, construing campaigns that neither collapsed entirely nor connected meaningfully. Ritz, The MAHA Center, Poppi, Instacart, Redfin (or Rocket), Salesforce, He Gets Us, Svedka, and Volkswagen were all cited for uneven execution. According to Kellogg’s panel, these commercials often leaned on aesthetic polish or abstract messaging while underplaying product linkage.

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Perhaps to be a learning lesson, the rest of the 30 minutes accounted for almost to total, par excellence. 

To match the scale of the NFL championship, Kellogg's framework evaluates commercials across emotional resonance, humor integration, and clarity of utility. Alongside the Best marked advertisement by Google, A-graded advertisers in 2026 included Bosch, Novartis, Anthropic’s Claude, Michelob ULTRA, the NFL, Pepsi, TurboTax, and Levi’s. Each was recognized for aligning narrative ambition with marketing precision.

The methodology traces back to historic Super Bowl benchmarks, most notably Apple’s Macintosh: 1984 commercial, whose cinematic dystopian narrative redefined the product advertisement scene. 

Super Bowl advertising remains a paradox of scale: unparalleled reach paired with unforgiving scrutiny. A resonant commercial can embed itself in cultural memory, as a Netflix-streamed Super Bowl could, but also, a misfire can evaporate before the final whistle. Coinbase’s reception crystallizes the cost of diluted messaging, while Google’s success reinforces the value of emotional clarity anchored in product relevance. As brands look toward future championships, the Super Bowl proves it is not merely a showcase for ads.

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Which of the Super Bowl advertisements did you like best? Let us know your thoughts in the comments!