The 25 best Super Bowl adverts of all time, ranked

A woman throws a hammer through a screen, a footballer throws a shirt to a boy, four friends shout down a telephone. The best Super Bowl adverts are the only commercials in the world that people tune in to watch, and after sixty games the argument about the greatest still comes down to one film: Apple’s “1984”, which Chiat/Day and Ridley Scott ran once, nationally, during Super Bowl XVIII, and which introduced the Macintosh without ever showing it. Coca-Cola’s Mean Joe Greene and Budweiser’s Whassup follow, and the full twenty-five are ranked below.

Every entry has been checked for year, agency and Super Bowl number against the brand, the agency or a trade source; where a credit could not be confirmed the film was left out rather than guessed at. The criteria are idea, craft, bravery, effectiveness and legs, with a Super Bowl twist. A thirty-second slot cost NBC’s advertisers a base rate of $10 million in 2026, so bravery here means what you risked with the most expensive minute in television.

25 to 16: the best Super Bowl adverts that broke a rule

25. Master Lock: Tough Under Fire (1974)

Super Bowl VIII, agency Campbell Mithun.

A marksman fires a rifle at a padlock, the bullet goes clean through, and the lock stays shut. Master Lock spent almost its entire annual marketing budget on the single spot and then kept coming back with variations for years, which made it the first brand to treat the game as an annual event rather than a one-off. It is a product demonstration with no story, no celebrity and no music, on this list because it is the purest proof of concept the Super Bowl has: show one thing, once, to everyone. Crown verdict: the advert that taught American brands the Super Bowl was a place, not just a slot.

24. Pets.com: If You Leave Me Now (2000)

Super Bowl XXXIV, agency TBWAChiatDay, San Francisco.

The sock puppet with the microphone sang Chicago’s ballad to a departing owner in the company’s first national commercial, which cost $1.2 million and finished fifth on USA Today’s Ad Meter. The mascot became more famous than the business: Pets.com announced its closure on 7 November 2000, nine months after the game, having sold goods for roughly a third of what they cost it. It is the definitive dot-com Super Bowl advert, from the year the internet companies bought the breaks and the puppet outlived nearly all of them. Crown verdict: a great character, a brilliant advert and a cautionary tale about buying fame before you have a business.

23. Budweiser: American Icons (2026)

Super Bowl LX, agency BBDO New York, music Lynyrd Skynyrd’s Free Bird.

A young Clydesdale befriends an abandoned chick that grows into a bald eagle, for Budweiser’s 150th anniversary and the country’s 250th. It won USA Today’s Ad Meter with a score of 4.00, the brand’s second consecutive win and tenth in all, ahead of Lay’s Last Harvest and Pepsi. The Clydesdales have been the Super Bowl’s most reliable emotional asset since 1986, and this was the horses used with a straight face and a bigger symbol than usual. Crown verdict: the most recent proof that a forty-year-old distinctive asset beats a new idea in the biggest break of the year.

22. Tubi: Interface Interruption (2023)

Super Bowl LVII, agency Mischief @ No Fixed Address.

Fox’s own announcers, Kevin Burkhardt and Greg Olsen, appeared to resume the game, then the screen behaved as if someone in the room had exited to the Tubi menu and chosen Mr & Mrs Smith, and living rooms across America shouted at whoever was holding the remote. The spot was deliberately short to limit the alarm, and it still drew complaints, including from Wanda Sykes, that it was dangerous. It is the best recent example of an advertiser using the broadcast itself as the medium. Crown verdict: the cheekiest fifteen seconds in Super Bowl history, and a stunt that worked exactly once and can never be repeated.

21. Doritos: Free Doritos (2009)

Super Bowl XLIII, made by Joe and Dave Herbert of Batesville, Indiana, for the Crash the Super Bowl contest.

An office worker smashes a snow globe into a vending machine to get free Doritos, and his colleague’s wish goes less well. It became the first consumer-made advert to top USA Today’s Ad Meter, which won the brothers a $1 million prize and embarrassed every agency in the game. Crash the Super Bowl ran for a decade on the back of it and turned the contest into a bigger story than the adverts. Crown verdict: the moment the Super Bowl stopped being an agency showcase and became a talent show, for better and worse.

20. Monster.com: When I Grow Up (1999)

Super Bowl XXXIII, agency Mullen.

Children look into the camera and announce their ambitions: to file all day, to claw their way up to middle management, to be a yes-man, to be forced into early retirement. It was Time magazine’s only advert on its Best of Television list for 1999 and it made a job board sound like a moral cause. The craft is restraint, black and white, no music to speak of, and a joke that lands harder the older you get. Crown verdict: the best recruitment advert ever made, and the first dot-com Super Bowl spot that spent its money on an insight rather than a mascot.

19. Jeep: The Middle (2021)

Super Bowl LV, agency Doner, director Thom Zimny.

Bruce Springsteen, who had never appeared in an advert, drove a Jeep to a tiny chapel in Lebanon, Kansas, the geographical centre of the lower forty-eight states, and asked a country that had just had a bitter election to meet in the middle. It ran two minutes, ten years to the day after Chrysler’s Eminem film, and marked the brand’s 80th anniversary. Whether a car company should preach unity is a fair question; whether it did so beautifully is not. Crown verdict: the last of the great Detroit sermons, and the one with the best narrator.

18. Chrysler: Halftime in America (2012)

Super Bowl XLVI, agency Wieden+Kennedy, director David Gordon Green, written by Matthew Dickman.

Clint Eastwood, in shadow, tells a recovering country that it is halftime and the second half is about to start, over two minutes of Detroit streets and factory floors. It passed four million views on YouTube inside thirty-six hours and was accused by both political parties of being about the other one, which is how you know it hit. The sequel to Born of Fire is here rather than higher because it repeats the move with a bigger star and a smaller surprise. Crown verdict: proof that Imported from Detroit was a platform, not a one-off, and the best use of a film star’s voice the game has seen.

17. Reebok: Terry Tate, Office Linebacker (2003)

Super Bowl XXXVII, agency Arnell Group, director Rawson Marshall Thurber.

Lester Speight’s Terrible Terry Tate flattens office workers for lingering at the water cooler and leaving spreadsheets uncovered, in a spot built from a short film Thurber had made in 2000. It aired nationally once and was downloaded more than seven million times from Reebok’s site, an early sign that the game could launch a series online. The catch is instructive: in polling only 55 per cent of people who loved it knew it was for Reebok. Crown verdict: the funniest tackle in advertising and a lesson in what happens when the joke is bigger than the brand.

16. Amazon: Alexa Loses Her Voice (2018)

Super Bowl LII, agency Lucky Generals.

Alexa catches a cold and Amazon replaces her with human stand-ins, including Gordon Ramsay bullying a man who asked for a grilled cheese recipe and Cardi B refusing to explain how far away Mars is. It won USA Today’s Ad Meter, narrowly beating an NFL spot with Eli Manning and Odell Beckham Jr, and Lucky Generals still lists the win on its own site as its Super Bowl playbook. The idea is a product demonstration in reverse: you learn what Alexa does by watching people fail to do it. Crown verdict: the best tech advert the game has had since Apple, because it made a voice assistant funny without making it human.

15 to 6: the greatest Super Bowl ads of the modern era

15. EDS: Cat Herders (2000)

Super Bowl XXXIV, agency Fallon, Minneapolis, director John O’Hagan through Hungry Man.

Grizzled cowboys drive thousands of cats across the Montana prairie, one of them tearfully picking fur from a saddle, as a metaphor for what a services company does for its clients. Only fifty or sixty real cats were used, the rest were computer-generated, and the spot won a Cannes Silver Lion, a Clio and an Emmy nomination. Bill Clinton called it his favourite commercial. Crown verdict: the best business-to-business advert ever put in front of a hundred million people, and the reason “herding cats” is a phrase everyone’s boss uses.

14. Pepsi: Cindy Crawford (1992)

Super Bowl XXVI, agency BBDO, creative directors Lee Garfinkel and Ted Sann.

Crawford pulls up to a desert petrol station in a Lamborghini, buys a can from a vending machine, and two small boys watching through the fence deliver the twist: “Is that a great new Pepsi can, or what?” It is a sixty-second joke about the advert you think you are watching, and it launched the new can design with the biggest star in fashion. Crawford has recreated it more than once, most recently with her son. Crown verdict: the best-made celebrity advert of the era, and one whose punchline was about the product, which is rarer than it should be.

13. Nike: Hare Jordan (1992)

Super Bowl XXVI, 26 January 1992.

Bugs Bunny recruits Michael Jordan to beat a team of bullies with cartoon tricks and a pair of Air Jordans, live action and animation in the same frame four years before Space Jam. The advert did more than sell shoes: Jordan’s agent, David Falk, used it to pitch the film, which took more than $230 million at the box office. A sequel with Marvin the Martian followed in 1993. Crown verdict: the Super Bowl advert that became a feature film, and the moment the sneaker became a character.

12. Ram Trucks: Farmer (2013)

Super Bowl XLVII, agency The Richards Group.

Two minutes of still photographs of American farms by ten photographers, including William Albert Allard and Kurt Markus, over a 1978 recording of the broadcaster Paul Harvey reading his speech So God Made a Farmer. Ram pledged $100,000 to the National FFA Organization for every million YouTube views up to $1 million and hit the cap in under five days, and the spot came third on the Ad Meter. It was criticised for romanticising an industrialised business, which is fair, and it remains the quietest thing ever to silence a Super Bowl party. Crown verdict: the bravest use of stillness in the loudest broadcast in America.

11. Tide: It’s a Tide Ad (2018)

Super Bowl LII, agency Saatchi & Saatchi New York, directors Patrik Von Krusenstjerna and Sam Larsson of Traktor through Rattling Stick.

David Harbour walks through every Super Bowl cliché, the car ad, the beer ad, the Old Spice ad, and reveals each one is a Tide ad because the clothes are clean. A 45-second opener and three fifteen-second follow-ups, one per quarter, meant that for the rest of the night viewers suspected every clean shirt of being a Tide ad. The other advertisers were, in effect, working for Procter & Gamble. Crown verdict: the smartest media idea in Super Bowl history, and the only campaign that made the rest of the break part of the joke.

10. Always: Like a Girl (2015)

Super Bowl XLIX, agency Leo Burnett, director Lauren Greenfield.

A sixty-second cut of the film in which adults are asked to run “like a girl” and flail, and then girls are asked and simply run, brought a feminine-care brand into the most masculine break on television. It won the 2015 Emmy for Outstanding Commercial and fourteen Cannes Lions including the Titanium Grand Prix, and in 2025 Ad Age named it the best Super Bowl advert of all time. Our full review covers how it made femvertising. Crown verdict: the only Super Bowl advert that changed what a phrase means, and the bravest media buy on this list.

9. McDonald’s: The Showdown (1993)

Super Bowl XXVII, agency Leo Burnett.

Michael Jordan and Larry Bird play HORSE for a Big Mac and fries, and the shots get sillier: off the scoreboard, over the second deck, “off the expressway, over the river, off the billboard, through the window, off the wall, nothing but net”. It was so popular that McDonald’s remade it repeatedly and the format fed straight into Space Jam. The line has outlived the athletes’ careers, and the product is in the first five seconds. Crown verdict: the best sports advert the game has had, because it is about two competitors rather than a brand.

8. E*Trade: Monkey (2000)

Super Bowl XXXIV, agency Goodby Silverstein & Partners, director Bryan Buckley through Hungry Man.

Two men clap while a chimpanzee in an E*Trade T-shirt dances on an upturned bucket, then a caption: “Well, we just wasted 2 million bucks. What are you doing with your money?” Gerry Graf and Dave Gray wrote it after failing to think of a clever way to spend the money, and Rich Silverstein offered to produce it at the agency’s expense when the client hesitated. In a year when every dot-com bought a slot, it was the only one that admitted what it was doing. Crown verdict: the most subversive advert the game has aired, and the best joke about advertising ever paid for by an advertiser.

7. Snickers: Betty White (2010)

Super Bowl XLIV, agency BBDO New York.

Betty White is tackled into a puddle in a game of backyard football, a Snickers turns her back into a young man, and Abe Vigoda takes the next hit. It won USA Today’s Ad Meter, launched You’re Not You When You’re Hungry, and BBDO has said the campaign took Snickers from seventh to the number one bar; in 2020 the Ad Meter’s editors named it the best Super Bowl campaign of the previous twenty-five years. Our review of the campaign explains why the idea travelled the world. Crown verdict: the most effective thing on this list, and the only Super Bowl spot that became a fifteen-year global platform.

6. Chrysler: Born of Fire (2011)

Super Bowl XLV, agency Wieden+Kennedy.

Two minutes and two seconds, one of the longest spots the game had carried, of Eminem driving a Chrysler 200 through Detroit to the Fox Theatre while the Selected of God choir sings Lose Yourself, ending with “This is the Motor City, and this is what we do”. Chrysler was two years out of bankruptcy and the advert was a statement that the city, and the company, were not finished. It won the Emmy for Outstanding Commercial in 2011 and Imported from Detroit became a line the brand used for years. Crown verdict: the most serious thing a car company has said in a Super Bowl, and the rare anthem that earned the word.

The five best Super Bowl adverts of all time

5. Volkswagen: The Force (2011)

Super Bowl XLV, agency Deutsch, director Lance Acord through Park Pictures.

A small child in a Darth Vader costume tries to use the Force on the dog, the washing machine and a sandwich, and finally on the Passat in the drive, which starts thanks to a father with a remote key. Volkswagen put it online four days before the game and it had eight million views before it aired, a tactic that changed how every brand has launched a Super Bowl spot since. It came third on the Ad Meter and by 2013 was the most shared advert ever made. Crown verdict: the film that moved the Super Bowl online, and the best use of a borrowed franchise in advertising.

4. Budweiser: Frogs (1995)

Super Bowl XXIX, agency DMB&B St Louis, director Gore Verbinski through Palomar Pictures.

Three animatronic frogs on a swamp log croak “Bud”, “Weis” and “Er” in turn, and eventually in sequence, with a neon sign across the water. Stan Winston’s studio built the puppets, David Swaine, Michael Smith and Mark Choate wrote it, and Verbinski went on to direct Pirates of the Caribbean. A 1996 study found more children could name the frogs and link them to beer than could identify Ronald McDonald, which was a problem for everyone except Budweiser’s sales, and Goodby Silverstein’s lizards arrived to electrocute them at Super Bowl XXXII. Crown verdict: three syllables, one log, and the most distinctive brand asset the Super Bowl has produced.

3. Budweiser: Whassup (2000)

Super Bowl XXXIV, agency DDB Chicago, director Charles Stone III.

Vinny Warren at DDB saw Stone’s short film True, in which the director and his friends greet each other with a drawn-out “Whassup”, and persuaded Anheuser-Busch to buy it and let Stone shoot it with the same cast. It aired first on Monday Night Football on 20 December 1999 and then in the Super Bowl, and it won the Cannes Grand Prix and the Grand Clio before entering the Clio Hall of Fame in 2006. Our review calls it the short film that ate the Super Bowl, and Stone’s 2008 reunion turned it into a political statement. Crown verdict: the only Super Bowl advert that became a greeting, and the best argument for buying an idea rather than briefing one.

2. Coca-Cola: Hey Kid, Catch! (1980)

Super Bowl XIV, agency McCann Erickson, director N. Lee Lacy.

Mean Joe Greene limps down the tunnel, a boy played by Tommy Okon offers him his Coke, the Steeler drinks the whole bottle and, as the kid walks away, throws him his jersey. It first aired on Monday Night Football on 1 October 1979 and won a Clio, but it was the airing in the Super Bowl that Pittsburgh won in January 1980 that made it a national memory. The Drum has called it the advert that defined sports advertising, and Ad Age readers voted it the best Super Bowl commercial of all time in 2011. Crown verdict: sixty seconds, two characters and a jersey, and every emotional sports advert since has been trying to throw it back.

1. Apple: 1984 (1984)

Super Bowl XVIII, 22 January 1984, agency Chiat/Day, director Ridley Scott.

Rows of grey drones stare at a screen where Big Brother lectures them on the unification of thought, until an athlete in orange shorts runs in and hurls a sledgehammer through it, and a caption promises that Macintosh’s arrival will show “why 1984 won’t be like 1984”. Apple’s board hated it, Steve Wozniak offered to pay for half the airtime himself, and it ran nationally that one time before winning the Clio and the Cannes Grand Prix, with no computer anywhere in it. Our full review tells the story of the launch film that showed no product and ran once. Crown verdict: the best Super Bowl advert ever made, because it treated the slot as a premiere rather than a break, and everything on this list follows from that decision.

Famous Super Bowl commercials that missed the cut

Some omissions are deliberate. Budweiser’s Puppy Love won the 2014 Ad Meter and Lost Dog won it in 2015, and both are lovely, but the Clydesdales are already represented and neither adds a new idea to Frogs and Whassup. Google’s Loretta from 2020 and Coinbase’s bouncing QR code from 2022 are omitted because their production credits could not be confirmed to our standard, and Lay’s Last Harvest, Taika Waititi’s 2026 film of a farmer handing his daughter the keys, which came second on the Ad Meter, will be reconsidered once its credits are on the record.

Old Spice’s The Man Your Man Could Smell Like is the most common wrong answer to this question: it was released online in the week of Super Bowl XLIV in 2010 but did not air in the game, so it belongs in our list of the campaigns every marketer should know rather than here. The Xerox monks of the 1970s are a case where the credit is muddled, and this list would rather be short than wrong.

How we ranked these

Every advert was scored on idea, craft, bravery, effectiveness and legs, with idea and legs weighted heaviest. Bravery counts for more here than in most of our rankings because the Super Bowl is the one break where the cost of a bad decision is public, which is why a monkey on a bucket and a two-minute reading of a farm speech rank above technically better films. Effectiveness relies on published evidence: USA Today’s Ad Meter, awards, view counts the brand released, or sales claims the agency has put its name to. Legs is the simplest test of all: can you describe the advert to someone who has never seen it, and would they want to?

Frequently asked

What is the best Super Bowl advert of all time?

Apple’s “1984”, made by Chiat/Day and directed by Ridley Scott, which aired nationally once during Super Bowl XVIII in January 1984. It is the film most polls and critics name, and it invented the idea of the Super Bowl advert as a premiere.

How much does a Super Bowl advert cost?

NBC charged a base rate of $10 million for a thirty-second slot at Super Bowl LX in 2026, two million more than Fox had initially asked the year before. Production comes on top, and a two-minute film such as Chrysler’s Born of Fire costs several times that in airtime alone.

Which brand has won the most USA Today Ad Meters?

Budweiser, whose American Icons in 2026 was its tenth win and second in a row, after First Delivery in 2025. Most of those wins featured the Clydesdales, which have appeared in Super Bowl adverts since 1986.