Beyond clicks and views: What Super Bowl 2026 ads teach us about emotional metrics

Super Bowl 2026 marked a subtle yet significant shift from the playbook that has long defined advertising’s biggest stage. While humour and celebrity spectacle have historically dominated the airtime between touchdowns, this year’s lineup leaned unmistakably towards emotion, memory, and cultural connection.

Lay’s told a father–daughter farm story steeped in legacy and heritage.

Ring focused on community rather than product, depicting neighbours rallying to find lost dogs. Rocket and Redfin, led by Lady Gaga, conveyed kindness and empathy wrapped in cultural warmth rather than a hard sell.

Even Mike Tyson appeared not to project aggression or power, but to reflect on health and well‑being.

The shift raises a question that advertising can no longer afford to ignore: how do we measure success when the goal is to make people feel, rather than simply laugh or click?

The emotional turn in a high-stakes landscape

Dr. Sandeep Goyal, Managing Director at Rediffusion, believes this pivot is both strategic and necessary. "Super Bowl 2026 ads are heavily leaning into emotion to create lasting, memorable connections in a crowded, high-stakes advertising landscape," he says. "Brands are shifting from pure humor to sincere storytelling, nostalgia, and, in some cases, quiet, thoughtful narratives to deeply resonate with viewers on a personal, human level."

Context matters. Super Bowl advertising is among the most expensive media real estate, with brands investing upwards of $7 million for a 30‑second spot, according to industry reports. In this environment, the risk of being forgotten is just as costly as the airtime itself. Goyal notes that while some ads remain humorous, others, such as Lay’s and Rocket Mortgage, deliberately use sincere, heartwarming stories to cut through the noise and build trust. "Emotional arcs, such as in the Lay's spot about generational farming, are designed to pull at the heartstrings, making the brand more relatable and memorable," he adds.

This is not sentimentality for its own sake. It is a calculated effort to ensure that messages are not only seen, but also felt and remembered long after the game. Goyal views this as part of a broader shift towards more authentic, heart‑centred marketing during one of the year’s biggest cultural moments.

Authenticity as a counter-narrative

Hari Krishnan, Former MD at Publicis Groupé and currently Mentor for Brand Studies at Altera Institute, frames the trend within a larger cultural reckoning. "Let's understand the overall context - the backdrop is that of AI slop taking over ad creatives, and the recent backlash that both Coca-Cola and McDonald's faced for their Christmas ads," he says. "To win back credibility, brands are prioritising 'authenticity' and 'connection' to create that heartbeat with viewers."

The backlash Krishnan refers to is recent and tangible. Both Coca‑Cola and McDonald’s faced criticism for their AI‑generated holiday campaigns, which audiences perceived as hollow and formulaic. In response, brands are recalibrating. Given the socio‑political context, empathy and nurturance are now commanding a greater share of the collective emotional landscape.

Krishnan is quick to clarify that humour has not disappeared from the Super Bowl showreel. "Humour is still very much part of the Superbowl ad showreel, but the warm emotional ones stand out," he notes.

What stands out is intentional. When millions are watching, and millions more are dissecting ads online in real time, brands can no longer afford to blend in. Emotional resonance has become a key differentiator, a way to claim mindshare in an environment oversaturated with messages.

The Indian lens: emotion as instinct

Manoj Shroff, Executive Producer at Equinox Films, offers a ground-level perspective that's refreshingly direct. "The emotional impact of advertising can be measured through research on how small groups react, but to me, the real test is simple: if people like the ad, they will talk about it and they will go and buy the product," he says. "Any true impact of advertising is shown by how people are attracted towards a product because of the ad."

Shroff's view is rooted in outcome over process. While he acknowledges the value of research, he believes the proof is in consumer behavior, not just data points. And when it comes to emotion, he sees India as having a natural advantage. "I don't think there is a difference between the West and the East in this regard, because we are far bigger fans of emotion than the West," he argues. "The West is only just starting to do all this now, whereas we have been doing it since childhood - whether it's in our films or our advertising."

He's not wrong. Indian advertising has long leaned into emotion, from the iconic Hamara Bajaj campaigns to HDFC's consistent emphasis on life's milestones. Emotion isn't a trend here; it's a tradition. "Currently, we often look for attention-grabbing things and focus less on emotion, but every time emotion is there, and it touches people - like HDFC does all the time - it always clicks with the audience," Shroff adds.

The challenge, then, isn't whether Indian brands can create emotionally resonant work. It's whether they can measure and report it with the same rigor they apply to reach, frequency, and conversion rates.

The gap between creation and credibility

There is cultural readiness in India to embrace emotion in storytelling, yet a structural hesitation remains when it comes to formalising its measurement. Performance marketing has conditioned agencies and clients to prioritise what is quantifiable, often at the expense of what is meaningful. Emotional KPIs, when they exist, are frequently relegated to secondary slides in campaign reports, overshadowed by CTRs and CPMs.

This creates a disconnect. Brands may greenlight an emotional campaign, but if success is still judged primarily by immediate sales lift or website traffic, the longer-term value of emotional connection is undervalued. According to a 2024 report by the Advertising Standards Council of India, only 22% of Indian brands regularly track brand affinity and emotional resonance as standalone metrics in their post‑campaign analysis.

Global trends, however, suggest this is changing. A 2025 study by Kantar found that ads with high emotional intensity score 23% higher on long‑term brand equity than those focused solely on functional benefits. In markets such as the US and UK, emotional impact is increasingly being tied to customer lifetime value, brand loyalty, and advocacy, metrics that matter to CFOs as well as CMOs.

Measuring what matters

Emotion, unlike clicks or conversions, does not fit neatly into a dashboard. So how do brands ensure their multi‑million‑dollar investments are actually landing? Krishnan points to a sophisticated pre‑testing ecosystem already in place, particularly in the West. "With sophisticated pre-testing methods such as neuroscientific testing, biometrics, AI, and survey-based methods, they ensure their multi-million-dollar investments resonate with audiences," he explains.

Neuroscientific testing tracks brain activity to measure emotional engagement and memory encoding. Biometric tools monitor heart rate, skin conductance, and facial expressions to gauge visceral reactions. AI‑driven sentiment analysis scours social media and digital conversations to capture real‑time emotional responses. These methods are no longer experimental; they have become standard practice for brands operating at this level.

Yet the question remains: are Indian agencies and brands ready to report emotional impact as seriously as performance metrics? The infrastructure exists globally, but adoption in India is uneven. While large multinational agencies working with global brands have access to these tools, smaller agencies and homegrown brands often rely on instinct, focus groups, and post‑campaign surveys.

The road ahead

Super Bowl 2026’s emotional turn is more than a creative trend. It signals that brands are willing to invest in depth, not just reach. But for this shift to be sustainable, particularly in markets such as India, the measurement framework needs to catch up. Emotional impact must move from being a nice‑to‑have to a need‑to‑report metric.

Indian agencies possess the storytelling muscle. What they now need is the courage to champion emotional KPIs with the same conviction they bring to performance dashboards. When the goal is to make people feel, the metric is not simply whether they saw the ad, it is whether they remember it, believe it, and carry it forward.