By Megan Graham

Health screenings, weight-loss meds and better-for-you beverages will take center stage in Super Bowl commercials Sunday, commanding a spotlight once dominated by beer and junk food.

Television's biggest event, which drew nearly 128 million viewers last year, will feature pharmaceutical company Boehringer Ingelheim advocating a urine test for kidney health, GLP-1 pioneer Novo Nordisk promoting Wegovy pills, and Ro and Hims & Hers advertising telehealth services.

"You know what these tight ends are so relaxed about?" asks former National Football League coach Bruce Arians in an ad for Novartis also starring current and former players. "Prostate cancer screenings. They've learned there is a simple, finger-free blood test. Roughly one in eight men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer. And I was one of them."

PepsiCo meanwhile is running Super Bowl ads for Pepsi Zero Sugar and its prebiotic soda Poppi. Liquid Death will tout a "better-for-you" energy drink. Unilever's Liquid I.V. electrolyte drink mix wants viewers to appreciate hydration. And a regional Super Bowl commercial from Kellogg's Raisin Bran is set to underline the importance of dietary fiber.

The ad breaks will still include more traditional fare, from Lay's and Pringles chips to Budweiser and Bud Light beer.

But Super Bowl advertisers have clearly adjusted their macros.

"This could be the health Super Bowl," said Tim Calkins, a marketing professor at Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management. "You don't think of the Super Bowl as a place to go and advertise that you should be getting your PSA tested," he said, referring to the blood test to screen for prostate cancer.

National ads in NBC's telecast of the game, where the Seattle Seahawks will face the New England Patriots, cost marketers around $8 million on average per 30 seconds of airtime, according to Mark Marshall, the chairman of global advertising and partnerships at NBCUniversal. But some 30-second slots commanded over $10 million, he said.

Consumers can expect to see Super Bowl ad themes echo after the final whistle, including during NBCU's coverage of the Winter Olympics now under way and the National Basketball Association's All-Star Game on Feb. 15.

"It was a couple-year process of us working to set up this 17 days of chaos," Marshall said. "The whole concept was not to look at the NBA All-Star Weekend, Olympics and Super Bowl as discrete events. We wanted to look at it as one collective event and use the power of all three to build on each other from a consumer and promotional standpoint, but also from an advertiser standpoint."

Novartis is returning to the Super Bowl after its debut last year succeeded at encouraging women to consider breast cancer screenings, according to Gail Horwood, chief marketing and customer experience officer at Novartis U.S. The company makes medicines to treat diseases including breast cancer and prostate cancer.

"You do see broad consumer trends of people interested in wellness, longevity," Horwood said. "And people are learning, particularly here in the U.S., we have to be very proactive about our health."

The "Relax, It's a Blood Test" message in this year's ad was inspired by men who avoid prostate cancer screenings because they don't want rectal exams, Horwood said. Novartis will partly gauge the return on its Super Bowl investment by watching whether more men visit its campaign website or partners' sites.

Artificial intelligence will loom large in other Super Bowl ads, including an attack commercial for Anthropic's Claude chatbot. "Ads are coming to AI," it says. "But not to Claude."

The spot doesn't call out any rivals by name but is clearly aimed at OpenAI, which recently said it would experiment with ads at the bottom of ChatGPT responses.

OpenAI also is expected to have an ad in the game. Google and Amazon will each show up to promote their AI assistants. And Base44, an AI-fueled app-development platform owned by Wix, will run a spot too.

Svedka vodka is running a Super Bowl ad that it says was primarily made with AI. It will depict its "Fembot" character dancing in a club with a "Brobot" companion.

"This is a really phenomenal opportunity for all of these high-tech companies to introduce their products to people, because they want you talking to your friends and your family about how you use AI at home to drive their user base," said Nicole Greene, vice president analyst in the marketing practice at research and advisory company Gartner.

Political discord and polarization in the U.S. means most brands will continue to avoid hot-button topics. Even the idea of unity, which Jeep called for in a 2021 Super Bowl ad starring Bruce Springsteen, is probably beyond the pale.

"A lot of people are not feeling like this is the time to come together, " said Calkins, the Northwestern professor. "They're feeling that this is the time to fight and to push back and to battle it out."

Smart Super Bowl advertisers are just looking to give consumers some levity and relief, said Franke Rodriguez, partner and CEO of creative agency Anomaly New York, which worked on four Super Bowl ads running in this year's game.

The culture "is just exhausted and overloaded and hyperaware," Rodriguez said. "I don't think people need more. I think what they're reaching for is familiarity, humor and moments of comfort."

Write to Megan Graham at megan.graham@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

February 06, 2026 06:00 ET (11:00 GMT)

Copyright (c) 2026 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.