As advertisers gear up for the 2026 Super Bowl this year’s commercial landscape may look familiar on the surface, even as major forces behind the scenes are reshaping everything from who buys ads to how reliably audiences are measured.

Associate Professor of Advertising Beth Egan says early indicators point to a surprisingly murky year for Big Game advertising. Despite Adweek dubbing it the “health and wellness bowl,” she’s skeptical that such a trend actually exists. Traditional players like Pringles, Lay’s and Uber Eats are still prominent, while so called “healthy” entrants (like Poppi, Oikos yogurt and even Raisin Bran) don’t necessarily signal a meaningful shift.

“I don’t know what the deep consumer insight is that makes Raisin Bran a Super Bowl brand,” says Egan, who teaches in the Newhouse School of Public Communications. She believes some brands may have purchased their Super Bowl slots before determining what will be included in the actual ad, or even knowing the product. “Sometimes the corporation buys the spot, a campaign gets delayed, and they end up scrambling to fill it.”

Competing for Ad Dollars

But the forces shaping this year’s ad spend run far deeper than brand categories. According to Egan, advertisers face a rare convergence of three major global sporting events within the same window: the Super Bowl, the 2026 World Cup in the United States and the Winter Olympics. For brands with fixed annual budgets, this perfect storm may create unusually tough decisions.

“This is a huge live sports year,” Egan says. “Once advertisers cover those buckets, they’re more likely to shift remaining dollars into streaming rather than make up the loss in linear TV.”

Complicating matters further is the timing of the Super Bowl in a midterm election year. By law, political advertisers must be given the lowest rate card price during the political window. To compensate, networks typically raise rates for everyone else.

“That’s what drives up the cost,” Egan says. “They want that ‘lowest’ rate to not be so low.” For many brands, that means buying a Super Bowl ad doesn’t just carry an $8 million price tag—it carries the inflated marketplace around it.

Streaming Splits Audience

Meanwhile, the viewing experience itself is becoming increasingly fragmented. While NBCUniversal will air the game on linear TV, the broadcast will also run on Peacock, Hulu, YouTube TV, DIRECTV and NFL+. That means millions of viewers may see different ads depending on how they’re watching.

Streaming platforms also measure audiences differently than traditional Nielsen panels. A viewer who logs out and back in, for example, counts as multiple impressions. Egan says that makes her “highly skeptical” of modern Super Bowl viewership totals.

“It’s harder than ever to know what the audience actually is,” she says. “But networks still have every incentive to tout record breaking numbers.”

Despite the confusion, she believes the Super Bowl remains advertisers’ strongest opportunity to reach a massive shared audience, which is a rarity in today’s targeted, algorithm driven media environment.

“It’s still the biggest live audience you’re going to get,” Egan says. “The question of whether it’s worth $8 million depends on the brand, but the value of that shared experience is real.”

When the final whistle blows on either a New England Patriots or Seattle Seahawks victory, Egan expects this year’s Super Bowl ad story to be less about who bought airtime, and more about how the industry is adapting to a marketplace that’s fundamentally changing.