Bluefish Proves Super Bowl Ads Influence AI Recommendations

The Super Bowl continues to be one of the few remaining mass-audience opportunities, commanding an average of $8M per 30-second spot. And yet, the Super Bowl audience of 125 million people is just an ordinary week for AI channels. 

As viewership migrates to streaming platforms and consumer attention shifts to AI channels, CMOs face mounting pressure to justify traditional media investments. Beyond raw reach, it’s difficult to quantify the full business impact of Super Bowl advertising.  

Bluefish has introduced a groundbreaking new way to measure Super Bowl ad ROI: measuring the impact of a brand's advertisement based on how major LLMs portray these brands to millions of consumers.

Bluefish analyzed 52 brands that advertised during Super Bowl LX, measuring their performance across AI channels. The findings show Super Bowl ads drive measurable increases in AI visibility (how often a brand appears in AI responses) and AI favorability (how positively a brand is portrayed in AI responses).

As consumers increasingly use AI to discover brands and buy products, these metrics determine which brands are recommended and which are left out of the answer. In this report, Bluefish leverages proprietary data to reveal how the 2026 Super Bowl Ad lineup influenced performance across AI platforms.

Brands with the highest AI visibility and highest AI favorability after advertising in the 2026 Super Bowl

1. Budweiser’s Super Bowl ad won AI 

Budweiser topped USA Today’s Ad Meter and also achieved the highest visibility and favorability scores across AI channels. This insight emphasizes the role of earned media as one of many sources that Large Language Models (LLMs) consider when forming responses. 

In addition to earned media coverage, LLMs synthesize social media, owned website content and third-party content to formulate answers, prioritizing brands with consistent messaging across all touch points. For Super Bowl campaigns, this means the brands on the AI Leaderboard weren’t just the most talked about, they told the most consistent story everywhere they showed up. To ensure consistency, AI performance requires investment across the entire organization, not just search or GEO-focused teams. 

This translates into competitive advantage: brands with higher AI visibility and favorability scores earn preferred positioning in AI-powered shopping experiences. As consumers increasingly rely on AI to discover and purchase products, AI channel performance becomes a driver of conversion and revenue. This suggests AI Marketing could finally connect Super Bowl investments to bottom line ROI for AI purchases.  

The brand leaders in the upper right quadrant achieved both the highest AI visibility and highest AI favorability scores among all 52 brands that were analyzed

2. Super Bowl ads deliver meaningful AI favorability gains 

While brands increasingly premiere commercials before kickoff to maximize earned media, Bluefish found that release timing had no impact on AI favorability performance. Interestingly, the three brands with the highest favorability scores (Homes.com, Hellman’s and Levi’s) all premiered during the broadcast.  

While release timing wasn’t a factor, the Super Bowl investment itself delivered measurable favorability gains in AI. Bluefish analysis reveals Hellmann’s saw a 27% increase in AI favorability, Michelob Ultra jumped 35% and Novartis rose by 38%.

Bluefish found Hellmann's, Michelob Ultra and Novartis saw the biggest lift in AI Favorability as a result of running ads in the Super Bowl

These favorability increases represent the importance of brand positioning within AI channels, as AI performance increasingly drives product discovery and consideration at the point of digital purchase intent. For instance, when consumers ask AI to compare beer brands, these favorability gains directly influence whether a product is recommended or not in LLMs.  

3. AI rewards human creativity 

Bluefish found that authenticity and relatability were the most important topics that LLMs considered when evaluating Super Bowl ads. Three of the top five most visible brands (Dunkin’ Donuts, Pringle and Instacart) scored above the industry average (61) in favorability for emotional appeal, with scores of 69, 68, and 67 respectively. All three ads leaned on humor and celebrity, which played a role in the “emotional appeal” scoring.

 Three of the most visible ads in AI scored above the industry average (61) in favorability within the "emotional appeal" topic on Bluefish

Bluefish Narrative Trend analysis revealed that AI channels consistently cited sources praising human authenticity and emotional resonance, while dismissing AI-generated creative as “stale and uninspired.” Brands criticized for formulaic executions saw favorability scores decline by as much as 53%.  

This finding proves creative quality directly impacts business outcomes. Favorability determines whether AI channels cite brands positively when consumers are making purchase decisions. For brands that invested millions in Super Bowl spots, Bluefish’s analysis finally quantifies the ROI of investing in creative versus cutting corners with generic content.  
 
The campaigns that resonated most with both people and AI channels demonstrated distinctive human creativity. Generative AI simply cannot replicate wit, cultural insight and emotional intelligence at scale.  

The Bottom Line: Traditional investment can translate into measurable AI returns 

The 2026 Super Bowl demonstrates that traditional advertising investments can deliver ROI in AI channels. The brands that won didn't just buy airtime, they developed emotionally resonant campaigns that were consistent across every touchpoint. 

Competitive advantage belongs to marketing teams that approach AI Marketing as a team sport — collectively driving performance cross-functionally, while maintaining consistency of message. AI Marketing can’t be siloed to search teams as a simple GEO strategy when its impact has broader implications for the entire organization.  

As AI reshapes the path to purchase, AI marketing enables CMOs to better understand how awareness-driving tactics connect to performance in AI channels. Proving how a Super Bowl investment influenced AI visibility and AI favorability is critical because these metrics determine whether brands get recommended in an environment that is increasingly driving conversions.  

Ready to optimize your brand's AI performance? Contact Bluefish to learn how our platform can optimize your visibility and favorability across AI channels and turn proprietary insights into revenue-driving performance.