By the time Budweiser’s Clydesdale soared across the screen to the sound of “Free Bird,” the game had already started somewhere else.
Not on the field.
But on your feed.
Budweiser may have won the traditional TV ad race, according to USA Today¹, but in 2026, the true measure of success of a Super Bowl campaign stretched far beyond a 30-second slot. Volume alone isn’t the touchdown anymore. Sustained interaction is.
And the brands that performed best weren’t betting everything on Sunday night. They had been warming up for weeks.
This year’s Big Game generated more than $550 million in earned media value across social platforms, with 764 billion potential impressions². The scale was massive. But what stood out wasn’t just the size of the conversation, it was how deliberately it was built.
The TV spot wasn’t the kickoff. It was the highlight reel.
With roughly 70% of viewers using a second screen³, the real action unfolded in comment sections, reaction videos, and cultural side conversations.
What Worked: The Game-Winning Strategy
Squarespace understood this strategy better than anyone.
Instead of saving its reveal for game night, the brand treated the Super Bowl as the midpoint of a longer build. Weeks before kickoff, it began constructing digital gravity. A MrBeast-led teaser campaign generated nearly a million TikTok engagements before the ad ever aired, capturing 24% of all pre-game ad engagement. By the time the commercial hit television, the audience was already in on it.
That sequencing mattered. Brands that released teasers or full creative ahead of kickoff saw 3.5 times higher engagement than those that waited until Sunday⁴. In a fragmented attention economy, anticipation compounds. Surprise fades fast.
Pepsi’s approach was different, but just as deliberate.
Their “The Choice” polar bear campaign didn’t just rack up 38,000-plus social mentions. It created a cultural tension point.
Because let’s face it, polar bears aren’t exactly Team Pepsi.
That wink was the strategy. The characters were simple, expressive, and just subversive enough to spark commentary. Within minutes of airing, feeds were full of side-by-sides, “wait a second…” reactions, and brand crossover jokes. The rivalry carried the conversation forward.
Pepsi poked the bear — and let social take it from there.
Across the board, the brands that won treated creators as strategic partners, not post-production amplifiers.
Neutrogena’s collaboration with TikTok dermatologist Dr. Muneeb Shah wasn’t about celebrity shine. It was about authority. Trust translated into saves, comments, and sustained conversation — the kind that outlives a Sunday spike.
And platform fluency separated strong campaigns from forgettable ones.
TikTok rewarded immediacy and personality.
Instagram rewarded clarity and shareability.
X rewarded commentary and speed.
The brands that aligned creative to platform behavior didn’t just generate buzz. They built engagement that lasted.
What Didn’t: Broadcast-Only Thinking
Brands that unveiled their ads for the first time during the game saw flatter engagement curves. Beautiful, cinematic spots that couldn’t be clipped, quoted, or recontextualized faded within hours.
Copy-paste distribution — identical edits across TikTok, Instagram, and X — underperformed compared to platform-native executions.
In 2026, social media isn't a distribution channel. It’s a living breathing ecosystem. Treating it like an afterthought showed.
The Takeaway: Attention - Not Airtime - Took the Win
The Super Bowl is no longer a 30-second Hail Mary meant to carry a brand for the rest of the year. It’s an orchestrated, multi-week campaign engineered for sustained attention.
The brands that won didn’t treat Sunday as a launch. They treated it as a milestone. Anticipation was seeded early. Creators were activated with intent. Real-time content was ready before kickoff. Post-game amplification was mapped before the confetti fell.
The win didn’t belong to the boldest ad. It belonged to the smartest strategy.