The Frontier Myth in Motion: Ads of Super Bowl LX

This year’s Super Bowl kicked off on Sunday, February 8th, between the Seattle Seahawks and the New England Patriots. Over 100 million people watch the Super Bowl every year, which creates a fierce competition between companies to create the best ads they can for the most effective viewer impression.

The most heartwarming ad — rated USA Today’s #1 of Super Bowl 2026 — was Budweiser’s depiction of the relationship over time between a Clydesdale foal and an eagle chick. These animals are closely connected to our self-image as a nation: courageous, independent, and resilient. Also, baby animals are cute.

The frontier thesis was introduced in 1893 by Fredrick Jackson Turner as a way to describe the American experience. It defined a unique type of person (courageous, independent, resilient, resourceful and hardworking) that thrived in the frontier environment. This myth took many forms throughout the 20th century and continues to strongly influence our relationship to the digital frontier in the 21st.

Budweiser’s “American Icons” commercial depicted a Clydesdale foal befriending and protecting a baby bald eagle, set to Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Free Bird” in celebration of the brand’s 150th anniversary and America’s 250th. (Image: Budweiser via YouTube)

The ad with the highest engagement throughout the entire game was that of AI.com, despite being placed at the end of the fourth quarter and being extremely cryptic about what the service actually provides. It generated 9.1 times more engagement than the median Super Bowl ad this year.

I found it to be one of the most intriguing I had seen all evening. It opened with two meteors flying around each other in space, perhaps symbolizing the user and their personal AI agent — a feature central to their service. It can also be interpreted as demonstrating the ongoing human relationship with the digital world. The two meteors collided to form the AI.com logo, at which time the phrase “AGI is coming. Get your @handle now.” appeared. It then showed three example handles (@mark, @sam, and @elon) — major players on the front lines of AI.

AI.com made a flashy debut during Super Bowl LX following a $70 million acquisition of the domain by Crypto.com CEO Kris Marszalek. (Image: AI.com)

As is usually the case, the ads that hit really hit. However, they were few and far between for me this year. My personal favorite after the Budweiser ad was Anthropic’s ad for its chatbot Claude, which explored the increased prevalence of advertising chatbots and distanced the company from this trend.

Our country is at a crossroads. As AI advances, the above-described ads juxtapose one another and highlight the historical and continued struggle we face between what we know and how that can change, a nostalgic view of ourselves versus the embrace of progress.