Snacks Reign Supreme: Super Bowl LVII Advertisers, Ranked by Favorability

While advertising is largely met with loathing eyes, most Americans tend to have a bigger appetite for it during the NFL’s season finale, where marketers are known to pull out all the stops to ensure their brands’ messaging matches the magnitude of the moment. 

Ahead of Super Bowl LVII, a new Morning Consult survey set out to determine which brands Americans are most likely to enjoy seeing on their TV screens this weekend. 

Morning Consult asked more than 2,200 U.S. adults their opinions of the 28 brands known to be running commercials during the big game as of Jan. 30. Mars Inc.’s M&Ms — which has dominated headlines in recent weeks for placing its famous spokescandies on an “indefinite pause” and appointing comedian Maya Rudolph to take their place — earned the highest net favorability rating (78) among the tested set. (Net favorability rating is the share of respondents with a favorable opinion minus the share with an unfavorable opinion.) 

Frito-Lay North America Inc.’s Doritos (75) and the Kellogg Co.’s Pringles (70) rounded out the top three. The chip brands were followed closely by Procter & Gamble Co.’s Downy (68) and Hormel Foods’ Planters Peanuts (63). 

The survey also found that Americans continue to have a penchant for humor on Super Bowl Sunday — a majority (56%) identified “funny advertisements” as their favorite big-game campaign type.

Snacks reign supreme 

• Four of the top five advertising brands can be found in the snack aisle, while seven of the top 10 brands operate within the food and beverage space more broadly. Previous Morning Consult research determined Doritos’ 2022 spot, “Push It,” which also featured fellow Frito-Lay brand Cheetos, was last year’s most-loved ad. 
• Sports betting outlets, meanwhile, did not fare quite as well. Ratings for FanDuel Inc. (13) and DraftKings Inc. (12) placed them among the bottom five brands, though they also had among the lowest awareness scores of all advertisers.
• Most alcohol advertisers scored closely to one another and landed within the middle of the tested set. Despite its average net favorability rating, Anheuser-Busch’s Budweiser for the second straight year stood out in open-ended responses as one of the two brands Americans most associate with the Super Bowl, alongside last year’s halftime show sponsor, PepsiCo Inc.

Super-high hopes 

Brand partnerships are a major advertising trend this year, beyond the always-popular celebrity cameo. 

Molson Coors Beverage Co.'s first Super Bowl ad in more than three decades will feature a collaboration with DraftKings, giving consumers a chance to earn money by predicting certain contents of the commercial, such as the total number of beers featured. Netflix Inc., meanwhile, will kick off a "strategic alliance" with General Motors Co. with a 60-second Super Bowl commercial starring Will Ferrell. The comedian will be seen driving GM electric vehicles through the worlds of several Netflix original shows, including "Bridgerton" and "Squid Game." 

The top three advertising brands — M&M's, Doritos and Pringles — also each plan to leverage star power in their spots. M&Ms will feature Rudolph as its "Chief of Fun," while Doritos tapped musicians Jack Harlow and Missy Elliott for its “love triangle” concept. Pringles is teaming up with another star, Meghan Trainor, to riff on her viral hit “Made You Look.”

Amid continued cord-cutting and younger generations' declining interest in live sports, questions about the Super Bowl's long-term place in brands' annual marketing ecosystems are starting to bubble up. 

For now, brand leaders are still sold on the game's value, as it remains one of few linear broadcast events still reliably garnering a huge captive audience. And the impact of the game extends beyond the broadcast alone. 

"Finding ways to generate excitement leading up to Super Bowl Sunday is now just as important as the game itself," said Stacy Taffet, senior vice president of marketing at Frito-Lay North America.

The Jan. 31-Feb. 1, 2023, survey was conducted among a representative sample of 2,205 U.S. adults, with an unweighted margin of error of plus or minus 2 percentage points.