Making people laugh in advertising is hard. Like an ageing stand-up desperately pushing edgier gags to stay relevant, there’s the risk of offending your audience – or worse, hearing nothing but gales of silence.
And yet, every year, Super Bowl advertisers pile in anyway, armed with tired one-liners, celebrity in-jokes and references to things that stopped being funny 30 years ago.
Take last year’s Big Game, for example. Using our AI-powered content testing platform to measure the effectiveness of all the ads broadcast during the 2025 Super Bowl, we found that 49 of the 67 ads we tested had amusement as their primary emotion.
Yet, none of these ads featured in the top 5 most emotionally engaging Super Bowl LIX ads. In fact, only three managed to get into the top 10. Instead, spots that tackled more serious themes dominated.
It seems that celebrities struggling to land a few gags has become as much a part of the Big Game experience as eating your entire bodyweight in nachos.
Still, it’s not all bad news. When Super Bowl ads get humour right, they really get it right. But what are the funniest Big Game spots? Well, as we look ahead to the 60th Super Bowl – due to be played next month (February 8) at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, California – we thought it would be fun to pick out some of the funniest campaigns.
Let’s face it, we could all do with a welcome distraction from our post-festive funks right now. And what better way than to sit through some funny ads of the last six years.
To help, we once again turned to our AI-powered creative testing platform to shake off its January blues and uncover some real ‘funnies’ from the last six Super Bowls – ranked from one to 10 based on their laughter potential.
Our algorithm is trained on tens of millions of actual human responses to advertising, meaning brands can understand, in minutes, the emotional and commercial impact of a video or image.
So, sit back, relax and enjoy.
10. Avocados from Mexico: “Always Good” (2022)
% of people who felt intense amusement: 37.6%
9. Paramount: “Sweet Victory” (2021)
% of people who felt intense amusement: 37.9%
8. Lay’s: “Stay Golden” (2022)
% of people who felt intense amusement: 38.1%
7. General Motors: “No Way Norway” (2024)
% of people who felt intense amusement: 38.3%
6. Avocados from Mexico: “Adam & Eve” (2023)
% of people who felt intense amusement: 38.6%
=4. State Farm: “Good Neighbaa” (2024)
% of people who felt intense amusement: 38.8%
=4. Doritos: “Triangle” (2023)
% of people who felt intense amusement: 38.8%
=2. Pepsico: “Road to The Super Bowl” (2022)
% of people who felt intense amusement: 38.9%
=2. Bud Light: “Last Year’s Lemons” (2021)
% of people who felt intense amusement: 38.9%
1. Paramount: “Paramount Mountain” (2024)
% of people who felt intense amusement: 39.8%