This year's Super Bowl commercials hit the usual notes: inspiring sports tributes, outlandish celebrity cameos, high-concept movie parodies, and a few dashes of social awareness.
But in a media sphere with fewer and fewer television events that capture a national audience, it's still a winning formula, YouTube VP Tara Walpert Levy told Cheddar.
"I think it is getting harder and harder to find water cooler moments that bring together these kinds of audiences that once existed in traditional television," said Walpert Levy said. "The Super Bowl is one of the few and one of the biggest that still delivers."
To highlight the most popular videos as of game day, YouTube on Monday morning ranked the most-viewed Super Bowl LIV spots on the video service.
Amazon topped the list with its ad starring Ellen DeGeneres and Portia de Rossi as they imagined what the world was like before Alexa came along to answer everyone's questions.
Facebook, Jeep, Hyundai, and T-Mobile also fell into the top five with a mix of star-studded spots that tended toward absurd humor rather than the flashy or self-serious.
"Comedy definitely won the day here yesterday," Walpert Levy said.
She added that lighter fare does better in the short term, in part due to the festive mood that comes with Super Bowl viewing parties, but "if you look at the trend over a broader stretch, you see a more mixed story, because of some of those more touching ads really pop."
The life of Super Bowl ads before and after game day is increasingly a factor in which spots get remembered and talked about.
No less than 43 brands pre-released their ads online before game day. That's up from 30 brands the year prior, according to Ad Age.
Companies understandably want to get their money's worth. A 30-second spot costs $5.6 million. The price hit $5 million in 2017 and jumped to $5.2 million in 2018.
While airtime during one of America's last big TV events doesn't come cheap, access to such a large audience might still be worth the price tag.
"If you're looking for a water cooler moment and to get people talking and you've got a great ad, this is the place to be," Levy said.
Astronauts will have to wait until next year before flying to the moon and another few years before landing on it. NASA on Tuesday announced the latest round of delays in its Artemis moon-landing program.
The Biden administration has enacted a new labor rule that aims to prevent the misclassification of workers as independent contractors. The labor department rule going into effect Tuesday replaces a scrapped Trump-era standard that lowered the bar for classifying employees as contractors
The KC-46 was to be the ideal candidate for a fixed-price development program. Instead, it has cost Boeing billions, and made industry wary of such deals.
Dave Long, CEO and Co-Founder of Orangetheory Fitness joins Cheddar to chat trends in the industry for 2024. He updates us on the company's plans to expand and what the state of the economy has meant for business.
One of the world's largest renewable energy developers will be getting hundreds of wind turbines from General Electric spinoff GE Vernova as part of a record equipment order and long-term service deal.
A moon landing attempt by a private US company appears doomed because of a fuel leak on the newly launched spacecraft. Astrobotic Technology managed to orient the lander toward the sun Monday so its solar panel could capture sunlight and charge its onboard battery.
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has announced that 100,000 businesses have signed up for a new database that collects ownership information intended to help unmask shell company owners. Yellen says the database will send the message that “the United States is not a haven for dirty money.”
A new version of the federal student aid application known as the FAFSA is available for the 2024-2025 school year, but only on a limited basis as the U.S. Department of Education works on a redesign meant to make it easier to apply.
A steep budget deficit caused by plummeting tax revenues and escalating school voucher costs will be in focus Monday as Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs and the Republican-controlled Arizona Legislature return for a new session at the state Capitol.
