Super Bowl Commercials. While many people focus on the winner or loser of the actual Super Bowl game, there is also much at stake with these commercials. Advertisers have 30-60 seconds to display their product or service; if the ad resonates with the watchers, on an emotional and practical level, they have the possibility of making millions of dollars from just one Sunday. Conversely, if the ad has almost no connection with the people watching, the advertisers not only lose the money they paid to air the commercial at the Super Bowl but also create a stepback that would make it harder for them to achieve a profit from their product/service in the future.

Clearly, the best Super Bowl commercials are ones that showcase actual people and create a personal experience that human beings relate to. It also had to incorporate an element of a very strong emotion, whether it was humor, longing, or sadness.

For this reason, I believe that Google won the title for the Best Super Bowl Commercial this year. It begins with a woman searching on Google, adding items to her new house, and trying to visualize what it would look like with new items or making renovations, something that many people who have moved can relate to. However, Google demonstrates how easy Google Gemini could make it, because instead of having to visualize internally and ultimately take a leap of faith when trying to organize the new house, Gemini immediately shows the user what it looks like with no guesswork needed. The ad emphasizes the message that Google Gemini makes things easy. Finally, towards the end of the ad, it shows different loving memories of the woman and her son playing in the house, showing how he grows older. The overwhelming cuteness the little kid projects keeps many people watching. Along with that, many mothers and sons watching the ad connect deeply with what was being shown. From all of this, Google Gemini is going to have a lot more users; every time it pops up on a searching device, many will remember the heartwarming ad.

On the other hand, I think Ai.com had the worst Super Bowl commercial this year. It was the logo, and they tried to do a bunch of flashy things with it. However, I felt no connection, no reason to even use Ai.com, and I didn’t even know what Ai.com was supposed to do. The ad gave me the feeling that Ai.com was just trying too hard to play “cool” and trying to stand out from the other, more emotional Super Bowl ads. However, rather than avoiding being generic, it ended up being more so; all it showed was the logo for a complete 30 seconds with some special effects to the word. While the Google ad felt like it took time and effort to make the advertisement, Ai.com’s ad seemed like it took less time to make than even its final duration.

Google was the best Super Bowl ad for its connection with the audience, while Ai.com was the worst for the “empty fluff” that it contained. Comparing two AI ads really puts in perspective the entire spectrum a commercial can have. It also shows that anything can be made creative enough to invoke emotion in an audience…Even an ad about a chatbot.