Hi {{ first_name | default: there }},

There's no bigger show in sports than the Super Bowl. Yes, I know some diehard Winter Olympics fans just threw their curling stones at the screen. But, it really is the whole package: the game, the halftime show, the ads that cost more than most people's houses, and now... the creators getting in on the action.

This Sunday, brands will drop $8 million on 30-second spots while simultaneously pouring millions into TikTok partnerships. They know nobody's watching the ads the same way anymore, even if they can't say it out loud.

The world is changing faster than I can keep up with, and I'm not sure I love it. AI-generated Super Bowl spots. Brands using AI slop to mock AI slop. Algorithms deciding what gets seen and what dies in a conference room somewhere.

But here's what I do know: Bad Bunny's halftime show is going to be incredible, the Grammys finally remembered that album covers matter, and somewhere out there, a person with a ring light is moving more product than a $10 million ad campaign.

The infrastructure moved. Most of the industry is still pretending it didn't. This week, we're digging into what that actually means.

In today's issue:

— Tom Mackay, Founder & Editor

If you walked around Santa Clara during Super Bowl LX this weekend, the shift was hard to miss. The NFL credentialed more than 160 creators for the game. Dhar Mann held the same media pass as ESPN. Robert Irwin worked press zones usually reserved for Fox Sports.

The league didn't do this for optics. It did it because creators generated more total video views about the NFL this season than the league and its teams did on their own channels. According to Tubular Labs, creators drove roughly 34 billion NFL-related views this season, compared with about 23 billion across official league and team accounts.

Brands saw the same numbers. Then they started reworking their Super Bowl strategies around them—even if most are still figuring out what that actually means in practice.

Grubhub bought its first Super Bowl spot, anchored by George Clooney, while running creator work in parallel across social feeds. Liquid I.V. also made its Super Bowl debut this year, but the rollout clearly isn't designed to live only in the broadcast window. Pringles kept the formula simple: Sabrina Carpenter carries the TV moment, and her existing audience does much of the distribution afterward.

This isn't brands "amplifying" Super Bowl ads with a few influencer posts anymore. It's brands treating the Super Bowl as one node in a broader distribution system, not the system itself. The strategy decks make it look tidy. The reality is messier.

Christopher Krautler at Grubhub described what's actually happening: "We're really leveraging celebrity for authority. But we also have influencers, because they are really all about creating relatability and utility."

That distinction matters. The George Clooney spot establishes credibility with a mass audience. The creator partnerships translate that message into everyday use, tone, and context. Two budgets. Two strategies. Launched at the same time.

That’s the operating reality for most brands at Super Bowl LX. Broadcast still delivers reach and legitimacy at scale. Creators do the work that actually moves people closer to action.

The money reflects that shift. According to the IAB, U.S. ad spend tied to creators is forecast to reach around $37 billion in 2025, with further growth expected next year. At the same time, a single 30-second Super Bowl spot is now pushing $10 million.

What separates brands that are still figuring this out from brands that have it figured out is whether those two strategies work together or simply run alongside each other.

The split is becoming more pronounced. Brands aren't spending almost everything on broadcast and calling the rest "social amplification" anymore. Digital and creator budgets tied to the Super Bowl are materially larger than they were even a few years ago. These aren't test spends. They're signals that distribution has shifted, even if internal structures haven't fully caught up.

At the same time, traditional celebrity isn't going away. Dozens of Super Bowl LX ads still feature familiar faces—many of them older, well-known, and deliberately safe. It's all about risk mitigation when the stakes are this high. When you're spending that much money, familiarity feels like insurance.

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Claude launched its first Super Bowl campaign three weeks after OpenAI announced ads were coming to ChatGPT. Four spots showing AI conversations hijacked by ads—therapist pivoting from mom advice to "Golden Encounters, a dating site for sensitive cubs and roaring cougars." Guy asking about abs gets pitched StepBoost Max insoles "that help short kings stand tall."

Mother made ads mocking ads on advertising's biggest stage. The closing line every time: "Ads are coming to AI. But not to Claude."

The timing is the strategy. OpenAI announced ads January 16 ($60 CPM, $200K minimum). Anthropic launched this three weeks later while the controversy was still fresh. When a competitor makes an unpopular move, you have roughly three weeks to weaponize it before the moment passes.

Why it matters: Both things can be true. Ads corrupt AI conversations AND subscription-only models gatekeep access. Anthropic can afford the moral high ground because they're small enough not to need ad revenue yet. Sam Altman called it "funny but dishonest" and reframed it as an access issue: more Texans use ChatGPT for free than total people use Claude in the U.S.

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Tyler, the Creator won the first Best Album Cover Grammy in 50 years for Chromakopia. Monochrome close-up, ceramic mask, eyes doing all the work. Luis "Panch" Perez shot it on a brand-new Hasselblad X2D 100C with huge continuous lights for that 1930s Hollywood studio feel. The defining shot came in the last three frames.

The craft is flawless. Years of collaboration between Tyler and Perez condensed into one image. But what makes the category matter isn't what won—it's what got nominated alongside it.

Bad Bunny's two white plastic chairs and plantain trees conjuring nostalgia through restraint. Perfume Genius splayed across patchwork carpet in stiletto boots, refusing to resolve the tension between private life and public performance. Wet Leg's deliberately repulsive squat with velvet worms and lizard gloves. Djo's fictional hotel on a Paramount backlot with characters staged in every window.

Why it matters: Album covers used to be how you discovered music. Streaming flipped the order—now you hear first, see second. But the cover still works. It's your lock screen when listening, the visual shorthand for an entire mood. The Grammys recognizing that 50 years late validates what designers already knew: the 12x12 square never stopped doing work.

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