Can Super Bowl Advertising Forecast Market Bubbles? A Pattern Emerges from Dot-Com Era Through AI
With 10 different AI product advertisements appearing during Super Bowl LX, market analysts are drawing parallels to historical patterns that suggest the artificial intelligence financial bubble may be approaching its breaking point.
Sunday's championship game attracted approximately 127 million viewers, establishing itself as both the year's most-watched sporting event across the United States and the highest-rated Super Bowl broadcast in history.
However, analysts tracking the technology sector have identified a noteworthy pattern within Super Bowl advertising campaigns: When emerging technologies dominate the commercial landscape, a market correction typically follows shortly thereafter.
Historical correlation between Super Bowl commercials and market bubbles, spanning dot-com to cryptocurrency
During January 2000, the internet-driven dot-com explosion was reaching its peak as web adoption accelerated globally. That year's Super Bowl, later nicknamed "the dot-com bowl," showcased 17 distinct commercials centered around internet-based businesses.
Among them was an advertisement from online brokerage e-Trade showcasing a 20-second segment of a chimpanzee dancing, concluding with text stating, "Well, we just wasted 2 million dollars. What are you doing with your money?"
Just two months following the broadcast, the dot-com market bubble entered a sharp downturn that persisted through October 2002.
An identical pattern emerged during the "crypto bowl" of 2022. During Super Bowl LVI, four separate cryptocurrency platforms purchased advertising slots: Coinbase, Crypto.com, eToro and FTX.
FTX, which has since collapsed, broadcast a commercial featuring "Seinfeld" creator Larry David, urging viewers to avoid "missing out" on cryptocurrency opportunities. Blockchain companies invested roughly $6.5 million per 30-second advertisement slot during that year.
Within mere months, the cryptocurrency sector experienced significant turmoil. The Terra stablecoin network collapsed catastrophically in May. By year's conclusion, FTX, Celsius, Voyager Digital and BlockFi had all declared insolvency. Genesis filed for bankruptcy in January 2023.
During the subsequent Super Bowl, crypto-related advertising dropped to a single ad: a non-fungible token campaign for the gaming title Limit Break. The 2024 and 2025 Super Bowls featured zero cryptocurrency commercials.
Coinbase's singular cryptocurrency advertisement at Super Bowl LX failed to resonate
Following a two-year absence from the Big Game, one prominent cryptocurrency exchange has made its return. Coinbase launched a commercial designed as a karaoke performance featuring the Backstreet Boys, simultaneously displayed on Las Vegas's Sphere venue.
The reception was mixed at best. Many viewers felt that cryptocurrency's reputation has not recovered from the FTX scandal. Political commentator Jordan Uhl tweeted, "From crypto to AI to Trump accounts, every Super Bowl has its own scam ad theme."
According to the Kellogg survey results, Coinbase's 2026 commercial "failed to establish a clear connection to the brand or its value proposition." The advertisement earned an "F" rating.
Nevertheless, the cryptocurrency sector has achieved substantial regulatory victories recently. Coinbase's commercial presence might indicate the industry's commitment to continued brand promotion during America's premier advertising evening.
Could Super Bowl commercials be forecasting the AI bubble's collapse?
This year's Super Bowl broadcast included a total of 10 advertisements focused on artificial intelligence. Anthropic promoted its advertisement-free AI platform, Claude. Meta demonstrated its AI-powered Oakley smart glasses, while Google's spot highlighted a mother and son decorating their residence using Nano Banana Pro, the corporation's AI-driven image generation tool.
Amazon unveiled its latest Alexa+ through a commercial starring actor Chris Hemsworth, depicting scenarios where he envisions AI turning hostile, such as the garage door closing on his head or pool equipment attempting to submerge him.
Svedka Vodka's 2026 commercial brought back its "fembot" mascot that was created predominantly using AI. Source: YouTube
The exponential expansion of artificial intelligence technology has occurred alongside astronomical corporate valuations and skepticism regarding whether companies like OpenAI can achieve profitability. Currently, certain market watchers are questioning whether the "AI bowl" served as a warning sign of an approaching bubble collapse.
Gary Smith, an economics professor at Pomona College, and Jeffrey Funk, an independent consultant with Carnegie Mellon, published their analysis on Sunday:
"In this AI bubble, the prices of AI-dependent stocks have become untethered from realistic projections of future profits. LLM-dependent companies such as OpenAI and Anthropic are losing enormous amounts of money yet are given valuations in the hundreds of billions of dollars as if they were real companies making real profits."
Advertisements concentrate on recruiting new adopters to the platform. Smith and Funk observed, "In the absence of profits, the tech bros increasingly emphasize an old metric that was popular during the dot-com bubble: the number of users, with a new flavor."
Before Super Bowl Sunday, software developer and researcher Carl Brown commented, "I don't know exactly how many AI commercials are going to be in the game this weekend. I already know there will be a lot more than it seems like there ought to be."
While e-Trade may have "wasted" $2 million during the 2000 broadcast, the company remained operational to celebrate outlasting the dot-com crash the following year. FTX alongside numerous smaller cryptocurrency exchanges collapsed in 2022, yet Coinbase and the Backstreet Boys appeared on the Vegas Sphere during this year's event.
The artificial intelligence bubble might indeed burst, but if historical trends are any indicator, several companies will endure — and perhaps produce a commercial commemorating their survival.