Superbowl LX - the only media moment left

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A Super Bowl ad costs roughly ~$250,000 per second.

The Super Bowl is not just another media buy. It’s the only remaining moment in American culture where attention, scale, and shared experience converge at the same time. For a few hours on a Sunday night in February, more than 100 million people sit down not just willing to watch ads, but actively excited to see them. They’re paying attention, ranking commercials in real time, and texting friends about which ones landed and which ones flopped.

For advertisers, this is the rare moment where incentives align perfectly. Viewers want the ads just as much as brands want the viewers. That alignment is why there’s no discount. A 30-second spot now costs roughly $7-10 million in media alone, with another $1-4 million in production and anywhere from $1-5 million for talent. Once brands layer on post-game amplification so the ad doesn’t disappear the next morning, the total commitment often lands between $16-29 million.

Cultural Compression

Companies are really buying compression: the ability to go from “I’ve never heard of this” to “everyone is talking about this” in a single night. The Super Bowl is the only place left where you can speak to roughly 100 million people at the exact same moment.

The Super Bowl ad slate serves as a cultural mirror. Each year quietly answers the question of what America is about to normalize. In the late 90s, it was dot-com optimism. In the early 2010s, it was mobile and social. In 2022, it was crypto.

This year’s signal is unambiguous: health, and more specifically, GLP-1s.

Multiple previews of this year’s game have already noted how prominent weight-loss drugs and telehealth companies are in the lineup. When a category shows up on the Super Bowl stage, it has officially crossed from trend to default culture. It’s no longer something people whisper about or Google privately. It’s something your parents reference casually that exists in shared vocabulary.

GLP-1s have officially gone mainstream

Ro’s Serena Williams campaign frames GLP-1s as legitimate healthcare, emphasizing blood sugar, joint stress, and long-term health rather than vanity weight loss. Hims & Hers uses a full 60 seconds to argue that modern metabolic treatments have become a luxury product, positioning access itself as the problem. Novo Nordisk’s presence reinforces the same message by implication alone: these drugs are no longer fringe. GLP-1s have reached the stage of adoption where the debate is how society integrates them.

What the ads won’t tell you

What none of these commercials will spend 30 seconds explaining is the part that actually determines whether GLP-1s improve long-term health.

As we have discussed before, these drugs are powerful because they suppress appetite and improve insulin signaling. But weight loss is not the same thing as health. In clinical trials, roughly 20–30% of the weight lost on GLP-1 drugs comes from lean mass, not fat. The risk is amplified when appetite drops, protein intake falls, and resistance training disappears. This is the wrinkle missing from every glossy GLP-1 commercial.

Clinicians already know this. Pairing GLP-1 therapy with higher protein intake and resistance training significantly improves body-composition outcomes and helps preserve both muscle and bone. The drug reduces food noise. Muscle gives that silence a direction.

Why you should care

The Super Bowl sets defaults. This year’s default message is that weight loss is medical and metabolic health matters.

In the GLP-1 era, muscle health becomes the deciding variable between temporary weight loss and durable health. If appetite suppression is the tool, muscle is the insurance policy. It determines whether weight stays off, whether energy stays high, and whether a smaller body is also a stronger one. Read the fine print, and enjoy the Super Bowl.

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