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.
Nestlé has dismissed its CEO Laurent Freixe after an investigation into an undisclosed relationship with a direct subordinate. The company announced on Monday that the dismissal was effective immediately. An investigation found that Freixe violated Nestlé’s code of conduct. He had been CEO for a year. Philipp Navratil, a longtime Nestlé executive, will replace him. Chairman Paul Bulcke stated that the decision was necessary to uphold the company’s values and governance. Navratil began his career with Nestlé in 2001 and has held various roles, including CEO of Nestlé's Nespresso division since 2024.
Kraft Heinz is splitting into two companies a decade after they joined in a massive merger that created one of the biggest food companies on the planet. One of the companies will include brands such as Heinz, Philadelphia cream cheese and Kraft Mac & Cheese. The other will include brands like Oscar Mayer, Kraft Singles and Lunchables. When the company formed in 2015 it wanted to capitalize on its massive scale, but shifting tastes complicated those plans, with households seeking to introduce healthier options at the table. Kraft Heinz's net revenue has fallen every year since 2020.
About 780,000 pressure washers sold at retailers like Home Depot are being recalled across the U.S. and Canada, due to a projectile hazard that has resulted in fractures and other injuries among some consumers.
