Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio, better known as Bad Bunny, took the Super Bowl stage this weekend in a historic moment for Puerto Ricans and Spanish-language music. And while some brands celebrated with great fanfare, a number were notably quiet.

Bad Bunny’s halftime show performance was announced in September, and since then, brands like e.l.f., Skechers, and Duolingo have shaped their Super Bowl ads and surrounding campaigns to appeal to fans of the superstar, who just took home the Grammy for Album of the Year, a first for a Spanish-language artist, and has been crowned Spotify’s Global Top Artist (aka the artist with the highest number of streams worldwide) four times, most recently in 2025. Ranging from telenovela storylines to more subtle nods and spotlighting Latino talent, these brands are leaning in on the Bad Bunny hype—perhaps enough to become one of his Conejos themselves.

But there’s still plenty of space for brands to have done more, according to Myles Worthington, CEO and founder of Worthi, a comms and creative agency that specializes in harnessing the power of underrepresented communities. According to a pregame Ad Age analysis, only five of the 71 celebrities confirmed to be in Super Bowl ads are Hispanic, while few ads prominently featured a Latino cast. (One notable exception was Redfin and Rocket Mortgage’s “America Needs Neighbors Like You.”)

“We know Bad Bunny is a massive, global star…you would think advertisers would think about that and be like, ‘All right, let me find ways to activate around a Latino audience who might be either new to the Super Bowl or more engaged this year than ever before,’” Worthington told Marketing Brew.

Continue reading here.—JN

The Super Bowl put up some pretty solid numbers.

The Big Game, in which the Seattle Seahawks handily beat the New England Patriots 29–13, saw an average of 124.9 million viewers across NBC, Telemundo, Peacock, NFL+, and NBC Sports Digital, according to Nielsen figures released late Tuesday. It notched 137.8 million viewers during the second quarter, becoming the “highest peak viewership in US TV history,” according to NBC.

This year’s Super Bowl is the second-most viewed show in US history, behind only last year’s Super Bowl, which brought in 127.7 million viewers on Fox. It’s also the most-viewed Spanish-language broadcast of the Super Bowl in the US, reaching an average of 3.3 million viewers.

In a press release, NBCUniversal said the viewership makes it the most-watched program in the broadcaster’s nearly 100-year history.

The Super Bowl halftime show, which featured Bad Bunny, notched an average of 128.2 million viewers, although that number could increase once global viewership data goes live next week. That’s down slightly from last year’s halftime show performance by Kendrick Lamar, which hit 133.5 million viewers.

On Spanish-language broadcaster Telemundo, halftime show viewership peaked at an average of 4.8 million viewers, making it the “most-watched Super Bowl halftime show in Spanish-language history,” according to NBC.

Read more here.—JS

There was no shortage of celebrity talent in this year’s Super Bowl campaigns, but the same could also be said for creator talent, both in ads and online.

“[Brands are] definitely integrating influencers into their full marketing strategy around the Super Bowl more than ever,” Emily Brown, associate director of strategy at influencer marketing agency Billion Dollar Boy, told us.

So where exactly did we see creators at the big game this year?

On the small screen: It’s become increasingly common in the last five-plus years for brands to cast creators like Charli D’Amelio, Addison Rae, and Alix Earle as the leads in their Super Bowl ads, and that trend showed no signs of slowing down this year, with cameos like Salesforce putting MrBeast front and center in an ad presumably targeted to 12-year-old SaaS experts.

Other creators made more subtle, IYKYK-type cameos, like T-Mobile, whose ad featured a cameo from Druski, the brand’s “chief switching officer,” as part of a crowd of rabid Backstreet Boys fans.

Overall, Brown said she was surprised at how many creators made appearances during the in-game ads. There was a strong Gen X and boomer presence among the celebrity talent—Jennifer Aniston, Jason Alexander, George Clooney…even Nerds opted for Andy Cohen this year after working with Addison Rae in 2024—but Brown said she felt there was a “healthy mix” of younger and older talent considering the creator presence onscreen and online.

Continue reading here.—KH

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Stories we’re jealous of.

• Business Insider wrote about site crashes afflicting some Super Bowl advertisers.
• The New York Times wrote about how social media and search platforms are using AI searches to create tailored ads and set dynamic prices.
• Bloomberg wrote about how celebrity endorsements have helped make colostrum the latest health craze, despite questions around product efficacy.