• by Wayne Friedman , Staff Writer, February 11, 2025

The best Super Bowl commercial this year -- from a performance-based perspective -- may be the one that simply offered a new product for free. Initially, anyway.

T-Mobile and Starlink are teaming to offer “the only space based” wireless service, according to the ad, with the launch of hundreds of satellites.

The overall goal is to reduce messages and phone calls that are not received or connected.

In other words, no land-based cell phone towers -- where there can be dropped signals or where there aren’t enough towers in rural locations -- are needed.

The minute-long spot says it is offering anyone on any wireless carrier “to experience it for free.” That is until July, according to the fine print.

The voiceover was big and dramatic, ending with a very big on screen word -- “free”.

According to EDO AdEnGage, the spot is estimated to have had a 12.6x engagement score -- with “1,163% as much impact as the average spot.”

The overall conclusion from this and other messages (Google Pixel, OpenAI, and Salesforce) is that viewers were a bit more interested in “practical tech.”

Health-focused advertising also did well in this Super Bowl -- for new GLP-1 drugs from Hims & Hers (7.7x) and water/sparkling water brands Liquid Death (8.0x), Poppi (5.5x), and Cirkul (6.6x).

But what about those celebrity-focused, fun and entertaining spots? Just one made it onto the list of the ten best engagement producing Super Bowl spots -- the storybook theme/high action shot featuring Glen Powell for truckmaker RAM. This spot got to a 8.5x engagement score, scoring second place.

Looking at the broader picture, another platform -- creative effectiveness platform DAIVID -- says the overall ads in this year’s Super Bowl were “the least effective in five years. A combined effectiveness: attention, emotions and memory metric hit an average 6.2 score out of 10, the lowest average since 2020.

In addition, the average ad generated the lowest positive emotion score in two years -- 47.4% of viewers.

So from all of this are viewers finally jaded to the point that those big entertaining, funny, loud rock-'n-roll soundtrack Super Bowl messages -- tuning them out when they come on during the big game?

From a more practical point of advertising impact -- at $8 million for a 30-second commercial or more for next year's event, creative minds may just think to go in another direction.

Maybe they will lower the volume and spark, or at make a simple offer everyone can understand -- free stuff.