Every Super Bowl ad enters the same arena: the same audience, the same broadcast, the same impossible expectations.
But not every ad is trying to win the same way, and let’s be real, there are a million ways to win the Super Bowl adscape. The Super Bowl consistently draws one of the largest TV audiences each year, averaging over 100 million viewers across demographics, interests, and lifestyles. It’s not just sports fans tuning in; families, culture seekers, entertainment lovers, and even trend-driven tech audiences make the big game a mass-moment cultural event, which is why diverse creative strategies can all find their own resonance.
This year, Anheuser-Busch didn’t place a single bet: it placed three. Budweiser. Bud Light. Michelob ULTRA. Each brand showed up with a different creative posture, a different emotional playbook, and a different definition of success.
Using Qortex’s Advanced Video Intelligence (AVI), we analyzed all three spots at the moment level to understand what viewers saw, and how different audiences emotionally responded.
Let’s kickoff.
It's not too late to launch a campaign or place your ads in and around the event. Let us know if you're interested in activating a high-performing contextual audience around the Big Game.
Budweiser: The Weight of the Moment
Budweiser opens quietly.
No punchline. No dialogue. No rush. Just pastoral scenes unfolding at their own pace. Horses in a stable, open fields, a farmhouse porch. The camera lingers. The pacing is deliberate.
At the center is an unlikely bond: a young bald eagle and a Clydesdale growing up side by side. Through changing seasons, they learn balance, trust, and eventually flight, culminating in a final, almost mythic moment as the eagle takes off from the horse’s back.
This is an ad that knows where it stands and doesn’t over explain.
And AVI confirms that confidence traveled farther than expected.
Audience: From “Bud Heavy Loyalist” to Cultural Signal
The assumed Budweiser drinker is often imagined as older, male, blue-collar, and deeply loyal. Someone who values tradition, Americana, and consistency, and reaches for Budweiser during family gatherings, barbecues, or classic sporting events. It’s a brand long associated with heritage, reliability, and no-frills authenticity.
AVI confirmed this foundation. Budweiser resonated strongly with Family Gathering Planners, Adult Sports Fans, and Social Beer Drinkers, reinforcing themes of tradition, pride, and shared rituals.
Where the findings became more interesting was how those rituals were framed. The ad resonated most strongly with Cultural Storytelling Lovers (95). These are audiences drawn to narrative pacing, atmosphere, and emotional weight. The horses, the silence, and the animal bond read less as nostalgia and more as intentional craft.
Budweiser’s strongest resonance didn’t come from beer-first audiences. Instead, its top matches were defined by mindset and moment:
Adult Sports Fans
Game Day Celebrators
Family BBQ Hosts
Social Beer Drinkers
Cultural Storytelling Lovers
Storytelling Podcast Listeners
Craft Beer Connoisseurs
The takeaway is subtle but important. This isn’t an ad about drinking. It’s an ad about belonging, continuity, and showing up year after year without needing to explain yourself.
Bud Light: Where the Super Bowl Actually Happens
If Budweiser stood still, Bud Light moved.
Its 55-second spot feels like the Super Bowl feels in real life: people talking over each other, jokes flying, a keg becoming the center of attention, and no one really sitting still long enough to “watch” the ad in silence. The star-studded appearance of Peyton Manning and Post Malone transcends different audiences in and of itself.
That’s not a flaw. That’s the strategy.
Audience: More Than the “Frat Beer” Narrative
If Budweiser stood still, Bud Light moved.
Its spot feels like the Super Bowl feels in real life. People talking over each other, jokes flying, a keg becoming the center of attention, and no one really sitting still long enough to “watch” the ad in silence.
That’s not a flaw. That’s the strategy.
Audience: More Than the “Frat Beer” Narrative
The assumed Bud Light drinker has historically been framed as young, male, casual, and sports-focused. Someone watching the game with friends, cracking jokes, and choosing Bud Light because it’s familiar, easy, and social.
AVI showed that this assumption still holds, but it’s incomplete. The strongest resonance came from Streetwear and Urban Culture Fans (95). This confirms Bud Light’s strength as a social glue brand rooted in shared humor, cultural fluency, and casual authenticity.
The surprising insight is that Bud Light’s ad didn’t rely on beer drinkers as much as social identifiers. Audiences who follow trends, comedy, and culture-first content connected most deeply.
AVI shows Bud Light resonating most strongly with audiences defined by shared experience:
- Streetwear and Urban Culture Fans
- Streaming Service Viewers
- Sports Viewers Who Socialize
- Sports-Centric Social Groups
- Comedy Podcast Fans
- College Alumni Networks
This ad didn’t command attention. It blended into conversation. And during the Super Bowl, that’s a powerful place to live.
Michelob ULTRA: Momentum in Motion
Michelob ULTRA doesn’t wait.
At just 10 seconds, its spot is fast, kinetic, and unmistakably forward-looking. Snow flies. Athletes move. Olympic rings flash. Team USA cues hit quickly, then disappear.
This isn’t about tradition or comedy. It’s about keeping pace.
Audience: Oxymoron? A Fit Beer Drinker?
The assumed Michelob ULTRA drinker is typically seen as health-conscious, active, and image-aware. Someone who runs, cycles, skis, or hits the gym, and wants a low-calorie beer that fits into a performance-oriented lifestyle. The brand is often positioned squarely at the intersection of fitness and moderation.
AVI confirmed this core, with strongest resonance among Olympic Sports Supporters (95). The creative clearly succeeded in aligning ULTRA with elite athleticism, national pride, and outdoor adventure.
But the broader story was more expansive. Lifestyle Influencers emerged as one of the strongest resonating audiences, revealing that Michelob ULTRA’s appeal now stretches well beyond fitness. The brand is no longer just a “workout beer.” It is becoming an aspirational lifestyle badge, resonating with audiences who value energy, aesthetics, and social visibility as much as performance metrics.
AVI shows the strongest resonance with audiences driven by identity and aspiration:
Olympic Sports Supporters
Lifestyle Influencers
Sports Event Social Viewers
Athletic Lifestyle Consumers
Active Winter Sports Enthusiasts
The standout surprise is that lifestyle-driven audiences outperformed casual social drinkers. That signals Michelob ULTRA’s creative works as content, not just advertising. It is visually shareable and aligns the brand with movement, ambition, and cultural momentum, especially heading into an Olympic year.
Michelob ULTRA isn’t asking viewers to relax.
It’s asking them to identify.
So… Who Actually Won?
- Each ad did exactly what it was designed to do.
- Bud Light won the party.
It embedded itself into the social chaos of the Super Bowl, achieving high peak resonance in moments defined by humor, culture, and group viewing. - Michelob ULTRA won momentum.
Its fast, aspirational creative aligned with identity-driven audiences and positioned the brand for visibility beyond game night. - But Budweiser won the broadest emotional ground.
The winner: Budweiser
Budweiser didn’t win by being the loudest, fastest, or most shareable.
It won by delivering consistent, high-resonance performance across the widest range of emotionally distinct audiences from ritual-driven family viewers to storytelling-minded culture followers and craft-oriented consumers.
Unlike Bud Light, which peaked in highly social contexts, or Michelob ULTRA, which concentrated resonance around aspiration and movement, Budweiser sustained strong emotional signals without relying on humor, speed, or spectacle.
AVI shows Budweiser’s creative operating effectively across:
- Shared ritual moments
- Narrative-driven viewing
- Craft and quality appreciation
- Heritage and identity signaling
In the loudest advertising environment of the year, Budweiser proved that emotional authority and restraint still travel, and that meaning can scale without fragmentation.
The Bigger Lesson
The Super Bowl doesn’t have one audience. It has hundreds of emotional contexts happening at once.
Anheuser-Busch didn’t place one bet. It placed three, each optimized for a different kind of resonance. Agentic Video Intelligence makes that visible, measurable, and comparable.
The real winner isn’t just an ad.
It’s knowing why it worked, and who it worked on, down to the moment. Interested in finding out which audiences your ads will resonate with, or launching a highly-resonate content-based audience of your own? Get in touch.
.png)
