You’re Not Going to Like What Happened to the Super Bowl Ad

Sign up for the Slatest to get the most insightful analysis, criticism, and advice out there, delivered to your inbox daily.

Two weeks ago, when a mysterious post popped up on Meg Ryan's Instagram featuring her alongside her When Harry Met Sally co-star Billy Crystal in his iconic fisherman sweater, it naturally stirred some excitement.

But then, a quick look at the calendar. This close to February? This had to be promo for a Super Bowl ad. (And it was— for mayo .)

In the early '00s, we had a generational run with Budweiser commercials like "Wazzup" and the Clydesdales. The former had an iconic major-release spoof scene in Scary Movie , and the latter had enough cinematic flair to inflict the world with a permanent case of " Directed by Zack Snyder ." More recently? Planters resorted to killing off Mr. Peanut.

How did it come to this? The Super Bowl commercial used to be a driving force of water-cooler conversation and cultural significance. Now, companies are posting ad campaign teasers, begging consumers to pay attention to their products long before the big game. Sure, the game itself puts up great numbers —unlike events like the Academy Awards or Golden Globes, or even the NBA , all of which have seen declining viewership—but ratings don't track the staying power of commercials.

Add to that the fact that modern Super Bowls translate less offline than they have in the past, and the extended ad cycles make sense, even if they make for less memorable commercials that also somehow feel inescapable.

"Fifteen years ago, maybe 20 years ago, the Super Bowl didn't just pull great numbers: There were a limitless number of Super Bowl parties," said Daniel Durbin, director at the University of Southern California's Annenberg Institute of Sports, Media and Society. "The week before the Super Bowl was the week in which more groceries were sold than any other week in the year, except for Thanksgiving week. It was almost a national celebration."

Not so much any more.

"When the Super Bowl was at its height as a social party, you went to see the Super Bowl in groups gathered around your television," Durbin said. Now, major cultural events are immediately translated and analyzed through social media, and "that just does not carry the same sway it might have 20 years ago."

Relative interest in " Super Bowl commercials " hit its peak in 2011 and has steadily declined, according to Google's search trends. And yet, despite fading Super Bowl ad "specialness," companies are still willing to pay an average of $7 million for a 30-second spot —with some breaking $8 million . Why?

"A Super Bowl spot used to be a Super Bowl spot—that was it. You would run an ad on the Super Bowl and that was basically what happened," said Tim Calkins, the associate chair of the marketing department at Northwestern's Kellogg School of Management.

For more than 20 years, Calkins has directed Northwestern University's Kellogg Super Bowl Ad Review, which publishes an annual rating of the year's Super Bowl commercials. Over that time, Calkins has seen the Super Bowl content ecosystem morph and grow over the years into something much bigger—and more expensive.

Behold, the Super Bowl extended universe: a teaser spot that lives online as part of a social media effort, then the TV teaser spots promoting the actual upcoming Super Bowl spot, and then the spot itself. Throw in a promotion or a sweepstakes, and we've got hours of content.

Calkins calls the evolution of the Super Bowl campaign teaser "an astonishing concept: that you will go out and tell people 'Maybe we're going to run a Super Bowl ad.' If you went out and said you're going to run a commercial during Murder, She Wrote , nobody would care."

The long-tail payoff has played out in other avenues too, like the hyper-weird Pop-Tart Bowl Ritual Sacrifice , which burns any hope of making sense on the altar of "becoming a meme template to raise brand awareness." Shelby Jacobs, senior social strategist at Dentsu Creative, says this temptation has commercials "trying too hard to go viral"; it might be the case that "in the war of attention, social media algorithms have won."

"That's why Pop-Tart Bowl worked: aside from owning the space for a full week leading up, the actual game, and after, they knew where their fans were going to be between action, so they went there too," she said. "Far bigger impact than 30 seconds."

The NFL doesn't really care as long as brands keep spending, which they do—but they also don't want to risk setting people off. Calkins said that doing that this year is especially tricky, thanks to our polarized climate, so playing it safe (and nostalgic) ends up being a smart move.

"If you think about what we could do that's interesting and notable, and maybe has some talk value, and isn't likely to get us into trouble—OK, let's go and bring back the Harry Met Sally crew. That's sort of creatively perfect, right? Who's going to be offended by this?" he said.

That kind of planning is all a good way for companies to protect their investments. And because big Super Bowl ads are now an expectation, Jacobs points out, it has left marketing industry professionals and the masses alike to view the ad spots as "disposable, with an annual shelf life."

But what about us, the viewers? Are we actually winning with all this corporate strategizing and fear of stepping out of line? Is " When Sally Met Hellmann's " our inoffensive instant classic? Will it have the same lasting impact of the Budweiser spots of Super Bowls past? Will any of the recent spate of ads? Durbin doesn't seem optimistic.

"I personally can't think of one where it just jumped out and got its teeth around the jugular of the media and stayed there," he said. "I hate to be the one to say this, but they just haven't been that interesting."