This year’s Super Bowl commercial won’t use cryptocurrencies

Super Bowl LVI was only a year ago, but some of the ads I saw back then made it feel like a very different time. The future of the Internet was all about cryptocurrencies, NFTs, and the Metaverse. A company that didn’t exist a decade or three before him spent big bucks to establish itself as a major player in his Web3, while older established companies made their claims in the same world. tried to claim That world won’t last long.

Over the past year, Web3 has failed, Big Tech stocks have flipped, and AI is currently cornering the field as the hottest thing in Silicon Valley. The flashy Super Bowl 2022 ad is a laugh in retrospect. Unless you’re one of the celebrities facing lawsuits for promoting crypto exchanges, or he’s one of the millions of people who have lost big money investing in cryptocurrencies. This is also thanks to the massive fraud that has plagued the industry. Or any of the thousands of techs who have been laid off in the last few months.

There will be no crypto ads in this year’s broadcast. Fox Sports’ vice president of advertising sales told The Associated Press that four cryptocurrency companies have either booked or are close to booking ads this year, despite the price of the cryptocurrency dropping. However, due to the collapse of FTX, he declined all of them.

This is the complete opposite of what we saw at Super Bowl LVI. Some people dubbed last year’s big game the “Crypto Bowl” because it got so many ads from so many crypto exchanges. We spent $14 million on ad spots per minute. Crypto.com ran an ad featuring Matt Damon. He said that “fortune favors the brave,” eToro touted the “power of social investment,” and a small company called FTX paid his Larry David to urge him not to miss cryptocurrencies. rice field. There was also Binance, who had an anti-Super Bowl advertising campaign.

Well, Matt Damon’s ad is no longer available on YouTube, but that hasn’t stopped it from being a source of ridicule for the actor.Coinbase has laid off 20% of its employees — twice. eToro has also gone through a series of layoffs and abandoned plans to list via SPAC. And, of course, FTX has become a symbol of implosion in a fraud-ridden and poorly regulated industry. Larry David was sued for appearing in an ad. Bitcoin prices are nearly 50% lower than he was during Super Bowl LVI.

Still volatile and largely unregulated, cryptocurrencies aren’t the only industry that didn’t benefit last year. A seemingly low-risk initiative by a big tech company was also used in a Super Bowl ad in 2022. Amazon’s Alexa commercial, starring real-life couple Scarlett Johansson and Colin Jost, blew us away as Alexa’s mind-reading powers caused marital difficulties and awkward dinners and her parties. Of the thousands of employees Amazon laid off at the end of his 2022, many worked on Alexa, but the project is losing billions of dollars a year, so Amazon is scaling it back. It is said that

And then there was Meta, which tried to sell both its Quest 2 VR headset and Metaverse Vision in its Super Bowl ad. A creepy animatronic dog that has lost its musical gig like Chuck E. Cheese has appeared, but with the help of Meta VR headsets, music can play again in Meta’s Horizon Worlds. But last year’s VR headset sales shrank, and Meta’s stock plummeted in 2022. The company ended the year with its largest layoff round in history.

The NFL itself partnered with Ticketmaster to offer a Super Bowl NFT last year.

This year’s ad features a glimpse into the (possible) future, along with standard Super Bowl commercial fare. There are food, alcohol, and cars, including EVs. EVs are easier to find in inventory and are tax deductible. Apple, the only big tech company that hasn’t experienced layoffs to date, sponsors the halftime show. Netflix partnered with He GM and He Michelob in the ad. Google touts his Pixel smartphone and photo editing tools that use AI.

Speaking of AI, we’ve almost got an ad that incorporates ChatGPT, the hottest generative AI tool that’s all the rage these days. Avocados From Mexico, a Mexican avocado advocacy group, planned to promote these avocados on ChatGPT. The plan was to insert her QR code into the ad and navigate to a landing page where users could use ChatGPT to “engage with the brand and share the results of that engagement through their networks.” Ivonne Kinser told her The Drum (she called it “avocado intelligence”). However, Avocado couldn’t make up for her ChatGPT feature in time and was removed.

There’s always Super Bowl LVIII. If the frenzy around generative AI continues this year, next year’s big game will be decked out in ads from all tech companies and featuring new generative AI boost services featuring the biggest stars in the country. It might show off in flashy advertisements. AI-generated versions of them. You might call it the AI ​​Bowl.

As for Web3, it’s not completely gone. Gaming companies distribute his NFTs to promote their games in purchased ads during the optimistic October period. The NFL has announced that the Metaverse-esque platform He Roblox will host its Super Bowl concert on Friday. The league said it will also sell a “collection of digital items” to coincide with the concert.On Feb. 4, the NFL also launched his Roblox game called NFL Super Tycoon. It “simulates the real business experience” including managing payroll and taxes, and is exactly what people want from a video game about soccer.

It doesn’t look like there will be an official Ticketmaster Super Bowl NFT for LVII, but I wouldn’t rule it out just yet.

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