Super Bowl Ads Shift from Stars to Stories and Humor Wins Big
XR Delivers More than 80% of Super Bowl Ads in 2025; Enhanced Creative Intelligence Reveals How Brands Are Reimagining Big Game Impact
New York, NY – February 10, 2025 – XR Extreme Reach, a global technology company that delivered more than 80% of Super Bowl ads in 2025, today announced its annual analysis of in-game advertising during the Big Game. The analysis revealed that humor was present in 85% of Super Bowl ads (up from 71% in 2023), while celebrity appearances dropped to 54% (down from 77%), as brands prioritized storytelling and authenticity while breaking new ground in representation. The report is based on insights delivered by XRIQ, XR’s AI-powered creative intelligence suite, which helps brands maximize creative value by informing asset creation, optimizing utilization and driving stronger audience engagement for greater impact and ROI.
The Super Bowl runs on ads and Super Bowl advertising runs through XR – and has done so for decades. XR ensures seamless execution and creative perfection from managing and paying talent, smart-tagging creative assets, inserting closed captioning, all the way through to final quality assurance. With deep insights into past and current Super Bowl creatives, XRIQ reveals how inclusivity, creative strategy and effectiveness are evolving to shape brand strategies and win over viewers.
This year’s Super Bowl analysis incorporates XR’s RX metric to measure inclusivity across age, gender expression, skin tone and body type, while the new CX metric evaluates creative effectiveness by assessing attention, brand visibility, connection, calls to action and equity (accessibility and sustainability).
Recent data underpins the role of creative and the value of new intelligence – studies cite creative as the biggest driver of sales and impact, while XR has shared that 50% of creative assets are never utilized.
These are the key takeaways from the XRIQ creative intelligence analysis of 2025 Super Bowl ads:
- Humor wins big! – The use of humor in Super Bowl ads has increased from 71% in 2023 to 85% in 2025, signaling a shift toward lighthearted, entertaining storytelling as brands look to forge stronger emotional connections with audiences.
- The story is your star player – The use of celebrities in Super Bowl ads has declined from 77% in 2023 to 54% in 2025, suggesting that brands are shifting away from star power as their primary engagement tool. Instead of only relying on famous faces to capture attention, advertisers are focusing more on strong storytelling, humor and creative concepts to make an impact.
- Creative makes a play – The action is in the experience, and brands want your full attention this year. This is supported by a 7% reduction in traditional calls-to-action, with advertisers potentially betting that powerful experiences will drive brand loyalty and engagement beyond game day.
- Make every day super – Super Bowl advertising is more representative of the large, diverse audience that the game captures. The average RX score for Super Bowl 2025 is 43, 11 points higher than the global RX average, highlighting an opportunity for advertisers to leverage creative intelligence insights for impactful everyday campaigns.
- The big game gets bigger – XR’s analysis of 2025 Super Bowl ads reveals evolving representation trends, powered by enhanced AI modeling that identified a 45% increase in individuals across in-game advertising – a significant jump from 2024. While it doesn’t tell the whole story, including a larger number of actors and spokespeople should lead to more opportunities to connect and engage consumers with people who look like themselves. Super Bowl advertising allows for a wider range of representation and a broader reflection of the viewing audience.
- Inclusivity takes the field – Super Bowl ads show an interesting change in diversity with rising overall RX scores driven by the inclusion of a wider range of body types. And, while almost two-thirds of ads feature people with darker skin tones, overall representation dropped 41% since 2023 (from 29% to 17%) and larger body types decreased 41% (from 54% to 32%), more ads featured seniors (41% versus 37%) and talent with visual disabilities increased 3x in 2025. Gender representation showed a notable shift: the proportion of feminine expression representation within ads increased significantly to 44% (from 34% in 2023), with masculine expression representation decreasing to 56% (from 66%), suggesting a more balanced gender portrayal when women are featured on advertising’s biggest stage.
“As Super Bowl advertisers push creative boundaries, XR’s platform provides the infrastructure for all advertisers to maximize their impact, ensuring flawless creative delivery and engagement at scale,” said Blair Robertson, Chief Product Officer, XR. “With technology and audience fragmentation creating more data and opportunities to engage, it is crucial that brands have solutions to put insights into action so their budgets work harder and smarter. XRIQ helps brands achieve superior creative performance and connect with diverse audiences through precision targeting and data-driven optimization, backed by the power and scale of AI."
With thousands of customers across 140 countries, the XR platform unifies creativity, data intelligence and automation – delivering an efficient, scalable and connected creative solution for brands, agencies, publishers and studios. By enhancing creative efficiency and relevance across all screens globally, XR helps maximize investments and drive greater impact.
A full breakdown of XR’s 2025 Super Bowl ad analysis is available here.
About XR
XR is a global technology platform that integrates data across creative, media and production to maximize business value and ROI. It empowers thousands of brands, agencies, publishers and studios to create, distribute and optimize advertising on any screen worldwide. With over a billion brand assets powered by its AI-driven platform, XR also transacts over $1.5 billion in talent, crew and vendor payments annually. Operating in 140 countries, XR has offices across North America, Europe, Asia and Australia.
Contacts
Alexis Gold
alexis.gold@purposenorthamerica.com