Advertisement or Entertainment?

Every year thousands of viewers look forward to seeing the ads that run between the game.

Marie Burns, In-Depth Editor

This year’s Super Bowl brought the usual collection of ads to present in front of 100 million viewers, all trying to provoke some sort of emotion from their audience, usually humor. But alongside the typical Doritos, M&M’s, and car ads; movie teasers, TV show trailers, and Winter Olympic promotions held the primary role in the commercial time.

“All the Olympic ads helped hype me up for the Winter Olympics,” said Carrie Minnier, junior, “and, of course, the Mountain Dew/Doritos commercial was funny since they incorporated Morgan Freeman.”

A few unconventional ads were also featured in the commercial lineup, including Tide and Amazon Alexa, left viewers pleasantly surprised and humored. Some companies used unusual tactics, like nostalgia, to attract viewers, like the Jeep Wrangler ad, featuring Jeff Goldblum in the classic Jurassic Park scenario.

What had confused viewers the most this year was the 28 seconds of complete darkness that appeared onto screens instead of a commercial because of a “brief equipment failure” according to NBC. This translates into about $5 million worth of ad space wasted, although NBC claimed that “no game action or commercial time was missed.”

“I thought that my TV shut off, so I had to turn it off and back on again,” said Kevin Woods, sophomore. “Later I thought it was actually a commercial, like a Tide ad.”