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The Super Bowl is a uniquely American tradition, placing a massive spotlight on not only American football, but current music, celebrity culture, and of course, advertisements. Now that the dust has settled on Super Bowl LIX, Genius Monkey is here with the juicy stats and lessons advertisers should learn from the big game.
Super Bowl Viewership Stats
First and foremost, this year drew the largest Super Bowl audience of all time; an estimated 127.7 million people tuned in, an approximate 3% increase from last year.
About 15.5 million people watched the game through Tubi, Fox’s FAST (free, ad supported streaming service) network, which streamed the game for free. That means around 12% of the spectators saw the game through a single streaming service; last year, all the streaming services combined made up about 9% of the viewership.
While the overall viewership increased, the amount of views in households actually decreased somewhat, falling from 39 million in 2024 to 37.1 million in 2025. This suggests that more people are gathering with friends in homes and public places to watch the game, solidifying the game as a social event. Every year, more people gather to socialize and bond over their favorite teams, the musical performances, and the commercials.
Stats on the Super Bowl Ads
As expected of the most-watched Super Bowl in history, the ads proved the most expensive as well. Broadcast commercials during the game averaged out to $8 million for each 30-second slot, with many brands paying even more to get a specific time slot or additional length. Commercial spots increased in price an average of 14% over 2024, while the viewership increased only by 3%.
Of course, there are many ads other than the commercials that air during the Super Bowl game itself. This year, the industry saw a notable increase in inventory for shoulder content; networks were showing more pre- and post-game interviews and analyses, and advertisers were pushing for a spot in that coveted coverage. Verticals and ad types vary dramatically, but most advertisers saw an average CPM of $60-$80 during the Super Bowl. This year, Genius Monkey users saw CPMs between $40-$55 for the big game and its associated shoulder content.
Back to video; building on a trend noted from last year, over 60% of the ads shown featured a celebrity, with many ads bringing together more than one. While the ads featured many of the old standbys like Doritos and Budweiser, 17 brands made their Super Bowl debut.
EDO tracked relative engagement of the ads by monitoring keywords across the internet immediately following their initial airing. By EDO’s metrics, here were the top 5 most engaging ads of Super Bowl 2025:
- T-Mobile - “You’re Connected”: About 12.6x the engagement of the average ad this year
- RAM - “Drive Your Own Story”: About 8.5x engagement over average
- Liquid Death - “It’s Safe for Work”: About 8x engagement
- Universal Pictures - “How to Train Your Dragon”: About 7.8x engagement
- Hims&Hers - “Sick of the System”: About 7.7x engagement
Brandwatch further reported the two most talked-about ads on social media specifically. First was Nike with its “So Win” commercial, Nike’s first Super Bowl ad since 1998. Second was the fan-made Doritos ad, “Abduction”.
Key Takeaways from Super Bowl LIX
What did the most engaging ads in this year have in common? Some had celebrities, some were funny, some were heartfelt; but all of them were part of a much larger campaign that started well before the big game.
Companies seemingly took notes from Genius Monkey campaigns and ran ads to promote anticipation for the event. Genius Monkey encourages its users to begin advertising well in advance of events or conversion targets; great advertising is less about flooding the market and more about carefully placing breadcrumbs in just the right place.
There’s undoubtedly a lot of social clout to be one by being proclaimed the “winner” of the Super Bowl ads, but the real work of engaging and converting consumers is accomplished with steady, consistent advertising that lands at the right time and place.
Everyone expects good ads at the Super Bowl; it’s become part of the tradition! But a good ad presented in a place consumers aren’t expecting has an even better chance of standing out and sticking in their mind. This is the promise of programmatic targeted advertising: meeting your customer wherever they go so they can notice and remember your offering.
Everyday is Game Day!
The Genius Monkey platform is in the business of engaging ads, so the Genius Monkey troop wanted to shout out a couple of their favorites that this article hasn’t yet mentioned:
- Ray-Ban + Meta: “Who Eats Art?”
- Stella Artois: “The Other David”
- Michelob Ultra: “The ULTRA Hustle”
When you’ve got an expert team on your side, not even the sky’s the limit. With our unique view-through tracking model, the Genius Monkey platform allows you to place ads with pinpoint accuracy, no matter what device your customers are on. If you’re ready to start increasing your conversions and decreasing your costs, then it’s time to get in touch with Genius Monkey!
