America’s Favorite Super Bowl Ads of the 2020s
While the holidays are the most wonderful time of the year for many, Super Bowl season is a personal favorite of mine. For advertisers, it’s the biggest night of the year, a stage to put your brand front and center and showcase your most entertaining work to date. Millions tune in, they debate the highs and lows and plenty of rankings aim to summarize the ‘best’ ads of the night.
At System1, we test every Big Game ad with the people who matter most: consumers. Our Test Your Ad Competitive Edge platform predicts creative’s long-term growth potential (Star Rating) and short-term sales potential (Spike Rating) based on how people feel, how intensely these emotions are felt, and how quickly and accurately the brand is identified by viewers.
Ahead of Super Bowl LX, we’re digging deeper into six years of Big Game data. That’s 425 full-length ads tested with more than 60,000 consumers. From the list of Americans’ favorite Super Bowl ads from the 2020s, we’re delivering an effectiveness playbook to help you craft the next great Super Bowl ad.
So, without further ado, let’s reveal System1’s Big Game ‘Hall of Fame’!
The Big Game ‘Hall of Fame’
The best ads drive an emotional response in people. This helps to build memory structures that support long-term profit gain and market share growth. That’s why we’ve developed our list according to the Star Rating, which predicts long-term brand-building potential. For ads tied on Star Rating, we next looked to our Spike Rating (predicted short-term sales potential) to settle the score.
1. Lay’s, “Little Farmer” (2025) — 5.9 Stars
2. NFL, “Somebody I It Takes All of Us” (2025) — 5.6 Stars
3. Huggies, “Welcome to the World, Baby” (2021) — 5.4 Stars
4. Disney, “Disney100 Special Look” (2023) — 5.3 Stars
5. Jeep, “Groundhog Day” (2020) — 5.2 Stars
6. WeatherTech, “Whatever Comes Your Way” (2025) — 5.2 Stars
7. Doritos, “Cool Ranch” (2020) — 5.1 Stars
8. Samuel Adams, “Boston Dynamics” (2022) — 4.9 Stars
9. Doritos, “Push It” (2022) — 4.9 Stars
10. NFL, “Flag 50” (2025) — 4.9 Stars
What Super Bowl Advertisers Can Learn from the ‘Hall of Fame’
If you’re on the list, you’re not only in great company, you’re creating exceptional work that people love, remember and are influenced by.
Hoping to get on the list? We’ve mapped out an entire effectiveness playbook based on the best practices these ads applied to win the hearts of audiences. Brands can combine these strategies for maximum emotional engagement and effectiveness.
- Tell a Story — A narrative with a clear beginning, middle and end, characters who interact with one another and emotional peaks and valleys are effectiveness gold. Whether it’s Lay’s story of a young girl growing her very own potato to the NFL’s, Jeep’s reimagining of Groundhog Day or Samuel Adams’ after-hours party with the Boston Dynamics robots, there are many ways for advertisers to tell a story that puts their brand at the center of it. Ads can introduce moments of tension or sadness, so long as they are resolved and replaced with positive emotion by the end.
- Make Your Audience Laugh — Amusement is one of the most powerful types of happiness, so making people laugh goes a long way for effectiveness. WeatherTech flipped the script by putting daredevil grannies in the driver’s seat and Doritos also delivered laughs by showing jungle animals singing and dancing. Don’t be afraid to push boundaries through over-the-top, slapstick humor that surprises and delights.
- Leverage Distinctive Assets — In 2025, average brand recall across Big Game ads was 79%, meaning one in five viewers couldn’t confidently tell you which brand an ad was for. Remember that familiarity breeds contentment. Disney leans into its recognizable IP for its ad celebrating 100 years while Samuel Adams continually features its fluent device ‘Your Cousin from Boston.’ Make your brand known, whether it’s through recurring celebrities or characters like Cousin or the Budweiser Clydesdales, a sonic device or jingle, or easy-to-distinguish brand colors and fonts. This ensures you make the most of your high-performing creative.
- A Celebrity Isn’t a Requirement — Many of consumers’ favorite Big Game ads lack one of the most commonly used creative routes: celebrities. While celebrities can entertain, they work best when they’re consistently used over the long term, like T. Mobile’s dynamic duo of Zach Braff and Donald Faison. More often than not, strong narratives that elicit intense, positive emotions win over flashy celebrity appearances that can distract from the brand and message.
- Consider (Relevant) Cultural References — Widely known cultural references deliver nostalgia for this mass audience event, which drives positive feeling. The NFL’s “Flag 50” spot drew upon Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Jeep brought Bill Murray back for a Groundhog Day redo and Doritos’ “Cool Ranch” capitalized on the popularity of Lil Nas X’s chart-topping hit “Old Town Road.” Each made sure the cultural references aligned with their brand: high school served as the backdrop to a flag football match for the NFL; Bill Murray (happily) relived the same day again and again, driving in his Jeep; and Doritos’ ranch-flavored chips got a western-inspired spot complete with the wildly popular country rapper.
Interested in even more Big Game insights? Register for our Super Bowl LX recap webinar on February 9. We’ll highlight consumers’ favorite game-night ads, the creative themes that helped them win and the latest insights into celebrities and fluent devices, the performance of newcomers vs. returning advertisers and more.