Stressing about whether your favorite NFL team is winning or losing causes your attention to veer away from the three-minute ads that pop on your screen showcasing familiar products and companies. The Super Bowl is the largest one-day marketing event in the world. This year, we are all curious about which two teams will compete in New Orleans on Sunday, Feb. 9, 2025, for Super Bowl 59. We will also see lots of advertising and marketing for it, wondering what truly draws the attention of the 123 million fans who watch the game.

One of the primary forms of entertainment besides football that draws the attention of all the fans watching the game is the halftime show. In past years we have seen iconic performances from Katy Perry in 2016, Justin Timberlake in 2018, Eminem, Dr. Dre., and Snoop Dogg in 2022, and many more. This year Kendrick Lamar will be performing on the big stage. As we have seen for over a decade, the soda brand Pepsi sponsored the halftime show until Apple Music took over in 2022, and now is the main sponsor. This is important because the company sponsoring the show’s logo is shown everywhere and is in charge of the promotions. Apple Music took over so they could advertise the company to draw attention and compete with their major competitor, Spotify. Apple Music makes sure to draw a big crowd to watch the performance, they have many ways of doing this considering in 2023 Rihanna’s performance was the most watched halftime show ever. They first announce who will perform for halftime 7 months before the big game. In 2024 on Sept 8 they announced that Kendrick was headlining the performance.

Companies compete to have the most memorable ads that gain lots of attention because of their unique humor and the celebrities featured in them. “An ad buy can cost $7 million for 30 seconds of commercial time plus creative and production costs that range from $1 to $5 million,” says Providence College. At Providence, every year, H. Kirk Bozigian, assistant professor of practice in marketing, invites students in his Principles of Marketing class to step into the shoes of a marketing manager working on a Super Bowl campaign. They can learn and study the ads we see. Companies want to ensure they sign the right celebrity to reach the right audience. They hope to attract an audience that will be likely to be involved in the company’s product or message. For example, they might use specific graphics and locations to draw attention to the ad from Mcdonald’s “The Showdown” from 1993, which made People’s Article of The Best Super Bowl Commercials of All Time. The ad features two NBA legends and became an instant classic when it aired during Super Bowl XXVII in 1993. Larry Bird offers to play Micheal Jordan for the Big Mac and fries Jordan brought for lunch, declaring, “first one to miss watches the winner eat.” The ad takes place on a basketball court, so it makes sure to set the scene while still doing a good job of displaying the McDonald’s product and showing why someone would want to purchase it.

Another thing that goes into Super Bowl marketing throughout the more recent games is the advertising through major social media platforms. They use influencer marketing through social media to promote the game to target audiences. For example, an app like TikTok, which has 1 billion monthly active users worldwide, has a major influence on its users. In last year’s Super Bowl, there was a hashtag created on TikTok called #SuperBowlLVII that alone collected 225 million views, more than double the game’s live viewership, says Marketing Dive. Compared to the total money made from ads during the event, it can reach $500–600 million for specific brands. Marketing Dive says, “While Doritos also paid for 60 seconds of national airtime during the Super Bowl for a campaign featuring cameos from musicians Jack Harlow, Elton John, and Missy Elliott, Captiv8 (a leading influencer marketing platform that provides marketers and advertisers with a software that helps marketers discover influential creators.) the brand paid around $550,000 to activate its TikTok influencers.” Marketing Dive is a leading publication operated by Informa TechTarget. The power an app has to draw the country’s attention to one game shows how important it is for the NFL to expand its marketing strategies to major platforms.

Overall, with everything happening behind the scenes in the promotion of the Super Bowl, it is interesting to see how the small things might impact the revenue stream and money spent on advertising for the game. The amount of work and money that different companies put into one night shows how vital the impact and influence there is from America’s consumers.