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Super Bowl commercials reportedly aim to target a less traditional audience ahead of the NFL title game on Sunday.
Though the league’s championship game has often been associated with older men, major companies are using the game to reach out to both Gen Z and female viewers with their latest advertisements.
“[I]f we had made something that didn’t speak to Gen Z or didn’t appeal to women, I think we would have been missing the mark,” Laura Jones, chief marketing officer of Instacart, told Variety on Wednesday.
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Super Bowl ratings reached record levels in 2025 with approximately 127.7 million people tuning in to the game between the Philadelphia Eagles and the Kansas City Chiefs.
This broke the previous record set one year prior in 2024 at about 123.4 million viewers.
With more viewers than ever before expected to watch the Big Game between the Seattle Seahawks and New England Patriots, major companies are hoping to appeal to the widest audience possible, which includes a growing female demographic.
“We are seeing female viewership in sports hold or continue to rise,” Mars Snacking senior director Diane Sayler told Variety. “And I do think that networks and leagues are getting better at telling the story of the players and telling more than just the story on the field. And I actually believe that is what is driving a lot more female interest in this space.”
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Companies have attempted to bridge the gap between age and gender demographics by using celebrity appearances, often partnering several celebrities such as actor Ben Stiller and singer Benson Boone to appeal to broader audiences.
“Most marketing today is very targeted. You have to deliver a specific message to specific audiences,” Tim Calkins, a marketing professor at Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, told Variety. “With the Super Bowl, that’s not the case, because you’ve got a huge range of differences. And the Super Bowl is so expensive you really don’t want to miss out on a significant portion of the audience.”
Media Research Center video host Justine Brooke Murray told Fox News Digital that the new marketing strategy was “spot on” but urged companies to instead focus on avoiding divisive politics.
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“We want to be entertained, not sold a weird version of body positivity that includes ads flashing sweaty armpits across the screen as we reach for another nacho,” Murray said. “Those of us who grew up in the 2000s, zoomers, would love to see a return to ads that sold us things we actually like: chips, and cookies – not a political agenda.”
She added, “Large corporations have already learned their lesson, that appealing to the gender-bending 0.0001% of our population with men wearing bikinis is inclusive to almost nobody. Just be funny and keep politics out of it!”
Super Bowl LX will be played at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, California.
