Budweiser took a risk casting young talent in its Super Bowl ad this year, and it appears to have paid off.
The beer brand’s second-quarter commercial, starring a Clydesdale foal, won USA Today’s 37th Ad Meter competition.
The AB InBev brand and its Clydesdales are Super Bowl mainstays and favorites among many in the ad industry, although it’s been a decade since Budweiser’s last Ad Meter victory, according to Rick Suter, a senior content strategist at USA Today parent company Gannett and the editor of the Ad Meter.
The Budweiser ad, as well as “The Little Farmer” from Lay’s, which came in second place, represents a departure from last year’s winner, State Farm’s “Like a Good Neighbaaa” starring Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny DeVito. This year, neither the first nor second-place ad had a celebrity in sight, and they weren’t heavy on humor. With that said, the celebrity-plus-comedy formula worked for some other brands during this year’s Super Bowl.
“Maybe we’re far enough outside of Covid now, where people are okay with having a little bit more…emotion,” Suter told Marketing Brew. “In 2021, people were like, ‘We’re good with crying, just let us laugh. Bring out a robotic dog, and let’s call it a day.’”
In the feels
This year’s top two ads have a lot in common, including similar plots. Budweiser’s “First Delivery” is anchored by a Clydesdale foal pushing a keg to a bar after it falls off a wagon, while the Lay’s ad centers on a young girl who plants a potato after it, too, is left behind by a delivery truck.
Both also have strong music, Suter said: Budweiser’s features ‘70s pop/country duo the Bellamy Brothers’ hit “Let Your Love Flow,” and Lay’s used Caroline Says’s cover of Barry Louis Polisar’s “All I Want Is You.” Budweiser’s spot features a touch of humor at the end (“A horse walks into a bar,” one patron says just before the foal shows up), while Lay’s has the power of a pup, plus strong acting from the lead actress, Suter said.
“I always say, if you can put a dog in a commercial, you’re always going to be pretty well-off,” he said, adding that “celebrities should look to that little girl as how you get a point across in 30 seconds.”
Sporty spice
Michelob Ultra and Stella Artois, both AB InBev brands, took the No. 3 and 4 spots, respectively, with stacked casts. Michelob Ultra’s ad features Willem Dafoe and Catherine O’Hara handily beating pro pickleball players Parris Todd and Hunter Johnson—along with other pro athletes like Sabrina Ionescu, Randy Moss, and Ryan Crouser—on the pickleball courts. The Stella ad, meanwhile, stars Matt Damon and David Beckham as long-lost twin brothers.
Get marketing news you'll actually want to read
Marketing Brew informs marketing pros of the latest on brand strategy, social media, and ad tech via our weekday newsletter, virtual events, marketing conferences, and digital guides.
With three brands in the top five, plus Bud Light coming in at No. 7, 2025 was a dominant year for AB InBev, which spent 33 years as the Super Bowl’s exclusive alcohol advertiser before letting the deal lapse in 2022 and opening the door for competitors like Molson Coors. Though the company no longer has exclusivity, Suter said AB InBev has its Super Bowl ad playbook down pat, and clearly tapped into it this year.
It was the NFL that kept Bud Light out of the top five, securing not only spot No. 5 with its “Somebody” ad emphasizing its work with youth organizations, but also spot No. 6 with “Flag 50,” its spot promoting girls’ flag football. The NFL topped the Ad Meter in 2019, and usually has a fair shot at the top 10, but landing two ads in the top 10 is still a “pretty wild feat,” Suter said.
Freshman (and sophomores)
First-time Super Bowl advertisers, of which there were plenty, had a bit of a tougher time on the Ad Meter. Of the freshman brands, Instacart ranked the highest at No. 13, followed by pharma brand Novartis’s breast-cancer awareness ad at No. 16, and Häagen-Dazs at No. 29.
Also toward the bottom of the list was Dunkin’. Its “DunKings 2” ad came in at No. 34 after the first iteration won second place last year. Suter chalked it up to a “sophomore slump” in the wake of a strong showing.
Even for the brands that didn’t crack the top spots on the Ad Meter, it’s hard to call any Super Bowl campaign a failure, he said.
“It’s such a giant audience that there’s really no complete miss, because even if it’s terrible, people are still going to talk about it,” Suter said.