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AI adoption is no longer the challenge—trusted context is. Most organizations have AI tools, but many still rely on disconnected, stale, or unverified data, limiting the quality and trustworthiness of AI-generated outputs. Meltwater MCP brings trusted, real-time intelligence into AI assistants.

Your Best Context is Already in the Room

Today, PR teams aren’t just tracking media coverage and share of voice. They’re also measuring how their brand shows up in AI-generated answers, search summaries, and large language models (LLMs). This new LLM visibility layer is quickly becoming a critical part of PR performance.

15 Must-Have PR KPIs and How to Track Them

See how one platform can power every decision across PR, communications, and marketing.

The Meltwater Blog

Blog Topics: Generative Engine Optimization, Media Intelligence, Media Relations, Social Listening, Consumer Intelligence, Influencer Marketing

Find out how you can leverage Facebook to boost your brand's online presence and gain a competitive edge. Explore the Meltwater category page today!

Facebook Blog | Meltwater

Find out how you can leverage Instagram to boost your brand's visual appeal and gain a competitive edge. Explore our category page today!

Instagram Blog | Meltwater

Find out how you can leverage LinkedIN to grow your professional network and gain a competitive edge. Explore the Meltwater category page today!

LinkedIn Blog | Meltwater

Find out how you can leverage TikTok to elevate your brand with creative content and gain a competitive edge. Explore the Meltwater category page today!

TikTok Blog | Meltwater

Find out how you can leverage X / Twitter to engage your audience effectively and gain a competitive edge. Explore the Meltwater category page today!

X / Twitter Blog | Meltwater

Find out how you can leverage YouTube to create engaging video content and gain a competitive edge. Explore the Meltwater category page today!

YouTube Blog | Meltwater

Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) is transforming how brands show up in AI-powered search. Explore insights, strategies, and best practices to help your content rank and resonate across conversational engines like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Copilot.

Explore insights and strategies for Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) to help your brand stay visible and discoverable in AI-powered search.

Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) Blog Collection | Meltwater

Every day billions of conversations take place on social media: tweets, posts, comments, blogs, reviews, podcasts, and much more.
Learn how to use social listening to make sense of all of that data.

On our social listening category page, you find all our blogs covering topics around social listening and social media monitoring. Read more.

Social Listening Blogs | Category

Business Reputation Management: What does it take to add reputation management to your marketing strategy? More importantly, how do you keep your reputation sparkly and shiny? Here’s your all-access guide to online reputation management for the long term.

On our reputation management category page, you find all our blogs covering topics around business reputation management. Read more.

Reputation Management Blogs | Category

From your brand's logo to your website, your social media presence to your customer support—these elements combined are what constitutes a brand in the minds of customers. But, there are thousands of other businesses that have a logo, website, social media presence, and website. So, how can you position your business on the market and make it stand out from the competition?
The key to success is branding & brand management!

On our brand management category page, you find all our blogs covering topics around brand management. Build your strategy and reach your goals!

Brand Management Blogs | Category

Competitive intelligence and the act of collecting competitive data can be seen as growth drivers for a company. Our guide will help you understand the concept of competitive intelligence (CI) by answering questions such as: What is the definition of competitive intelligence? How is competitive intelligence useful to organizations? What is the goal of competitive intelligence? And more.

On our competitive intelligence category page, you find all our blogs covering topics around competitive intelligence. Learn how to stay ahead.

Competitive Intelligence Blogs | Category

Let’s dive into the customer journey framework and how to optimize the process by creating a customer journey map and using metrics that matter when analyzing the customer journey.

On our customer journey category page, you find all our blogs covering topics around mapping and understanding the customer journey.

Customer Journey Blogs | Category

What Is Data Analytics?
How can I grow my business? 
How do customers interact with my newly launched product?
How do I increase the productivity of my employees?
How do I know if my marketing efforts are working?
We have just two words for you...Data analytics!

On our data analytics category page, you find all our blogs covering topics around AI and data analytics. Technical and still easy to understand.

AI & Data Analytics Blogs | Category

Public relations and media relations can add impact to any marketing strategy. It’s an opportunity for brands to grow their reach beyond traditional sales messages. PR helps to shape the image you want people to have of your brand.
So, what is PR and how do you use it? This guide shows you everything you need to know to build a strong public relations foundation.

On our public relations (PR) category page, you find all our blogs covering public relations and communications topics. Step up your PR game.

Public Relations (PR) Blogs | Category

We all know exactly what the roles of sales or accounting are in a company, right? We might even have a slight idea of what the IT guys are doing.
But there is another business discipline, that plays a crucial role in organizations, even more so during the pandemic – internal communications!
But what exactly do we mean by that, what purpose does it serve and what steps can you take to ensure you and your employees will communicate effectively?

On our internal communications category page, you find all our blogs about internal comms topics. Learn about the intranet, internal newsletters, and more.

Internal Communications Blogs | Category

As the internet has taken root in more areas of our lives — everything from entertainment to shopping to paying bills and more — traditional marketing is becoming less impactful. As any marketer knows, you need to focus on where your audience is if you want to reach them. Since the average person spends about seven hours a day online, it’s no surprise that content has maintained its hold on marketers.
Here's a closer look at what content marketing is and why it matters more than ever in our digital-first economy.

On our content marketing category page, you find blogs about content marketing topics. Learn about strategies, KPIs, tips, and more. Make your content king!

Content Marketing Blogs | Category

The rise of the influencer marketing space – today a $10 billion industry, growing 50% per year – is one of the clearest examples of how social media is transforming traditional marketing. These days having a business website, presence on social, PR coverage, and your own content isn’t enough to compete.
We'll dive into the intricacies of influencer marketing to help ensure that you're equipped with the insights needed to be successful in this space.

On our influencer marketing category page, you find blogs about influencer marketing topics. Build your strategy, find influencers, and measure results.

Influencer Marketing Blogs | Category

Have you just launched a new product or service that you want to get the word out about? Maybe you want to share with consumers why it is awesome and how it is so much better than the one your competitors offer.
Well, then, there is one thing you can't do without...Marketing!

On our marketing category page, you find blogs about marketing topics. Learn about all the different angles and types of marketing and improve your results.

Marketing Blogs | Category

In this guide, we want to give you a peek into the definition of social media management, the daily schedule of a social media manager, social media platforms to promote your business, and the do’s & don’ts of social media management.
Are you ready to begin the journey of becoming a social media superstar?

On our social media management category page, you find blogs about social media management topics. Build and manage your online community.

Social Media Management Blogs | Category

Building a following and using social media platforms to reach a wider audience requires a well-planned social media marketing strategy. In this guide, we’ll be looking at why social media marketing is so essential and how you can make it work for your business.

On our social media marketing category page, you find blogs about social media marketing topics. Learn how to get the highest paid social ROI!

Social Media Marketing Blogs | Category

In the fast-evolving realm of digital marketing and public relations, utilizing the right tools is crucial for success. Our interdisciplinary category showcases all the pertinent tools for digital marketing & PR. These tools help in enhancing your online presence and effectively reaching target groups, whether through reputation management, influencer marketing, or social media management.

On our digital marketing and PR tools category page, you find all our blogs covering topics around mapping and understanding the customer journey.

Digital Marketing & PR Tools Blogs | Category

On the hunt for a media monitoring and social media marketing platform? If so, you may have come across Mention, a software suite that lets marketers monitor web and social media conversations about their brands. From its publishing tools to its analytics features, it likely checks off multiple boxes on your must-have list, but there are also many similar software platforms out there.

To help you stay on track while you consider your options, we compiled this look at some of the leading alternatives to Mention. Read on to learn how each alternative measures up, starting with a quick overview of Mention.

What Should You Look For in a Mention Alternative?

Some of the top competitive alternatives to Mention are:

Let's take a closer look at each one and how they compare. 

Meltwater social listening and media monitoring solutions gives organizations all over the world the tools they need to turn social and traditional media intelligence into data-driven marketing strategies. Meltwater Explore listens to global news content, broadcast media, and social media sources, as well as other web content like podcasts.

Real-time listening across social platforms, blogs, forums, news sites, review sites, and podcasts with AI-driven insights.

Unlimited keyword monitoring with no result caps — ideal for deep exploratory tracking.

AI-powered sentiment analysis and thematic trend identification.

Visual and image recognition (logos, objects, scenes) enabling organizations to capture non-text brand mentions.

Automated alerts and customizable dashboards with reporting across different teams. Slack and Teams integrations available for real-time insights.

GenAI Lens for tracking how generative AI represents your brand and competitors in LLMs like ChatGPT and Gemini

Best for: Large enterprises and global brands seeking comprehensive coverage, AI-powered sentiment analysis and trend detection, and customizable reporting options.

In addition to social listening, the influencer marketing platform gives Meltwater users even more opportunities to leverage insights and engage audiences. While Mention has great brand management tools, it has limited influencer identification and management features.

Meltwater social listening and reporting tools allow for a greater scope of analysis. With it, marketing teams can better measure and communicate performance. As a whole, the Meltwater platform helps organizations of all sizes use data to make better marketing and business decisions.

Mentionlytics is a social media monitoring tool that helps users keep track of online conversations about their brands, products, and competitors. Its features include hashtag monitoring across Instagram and X, review monitoring of top review sources like Google and Facebook, and an influencer identification tool.

Track mentions across social media and web sources including sentiment analysis and AI insights.

AI-driven sentiment and keyword monitoring across a broad set of sources.

Dashboards and alerts for spikes and anomalous mention trends.

Custom reporting and translation features for global monitoring.Best for:

Best for: Small to mid-sized businesses and agencies on a budget looking to get core social listening features without enterprise pricing.

Mentionlytics a great tool for brands looking to execute social media marketing campaigns, especially small businesses. It also offers higher monthly mention limits and more user and social profile access at each pricing tier than Mention. Notably, Mention offers broadcast media monitoring (for U.S. and Canada sources) while Mentionlytics does not. Both offer two-week free trials to help you decide which one is best suited to your needs.

Brand24 is a social listening and analytics tool that monitors brand name and keyword mentions across publicly available social media and web sources, including blogs, videos, and reviews. Its affordable plans are good options for budget-conscious brands that are ok with monthly mention and keyword limitations.

Real-time social listening across social media, news, blogs, videos, forums, reviews, and podcasts.

AI-powered sentiment analysis and word clouds to surface key themes.

Share of voice, reach scoring, and influencer identification.

Alerts for spikes in mentions and trend insights.

API and integrations and easy reporting exports.

Best for: Marketing teams, PR pros, and customer support teams in small-to-medium businesses.

Both Mention and Brand24 access data from the top social platforms, but Brand24 higher-tier plans offer monitoring on podcasts, Reddit, Twitch, Medium, and Quora while Mention's do not. According to G2 reviewers, one of Mention's big strengths is its clean, easy-to-use dashboards that display mentions and analytics from all sources in one place. But those dashboards — along with reporting tools — are not available for individual plans. Because of this, single-person teams looking for analytics and reporting capabilities may be happier with Brand24.

Tip: Check out our blog on the best alternatives to Brand24.

Agorapulse is a social media management tool that includes social listening across X (Twitter), Instagram, and Youtube, as well as profile mentions across X, Instagram, Youtube, and Facebook. It also offers a mobile app for all of its pricing tiers and up to two years of data retention for its advanced and custom plans.

Social listening and monitoring for mentions, hashtags, and keywords across core social platforms.

Unified social inbox to consolidate comments/messages for engagement and response.

Scheduling, publishing, and analytics built into one platform.

Collaboration, reporting, and team workflows.

Best for: Social media managers and marketing teams who want monitoring + engagement + publishing in one tool.

Agorapulse is primarily a social media management platform, though it also has key social listening features, like sentiment analysis.

That said, Mention may be a better fit for data-driven marketers who want to analyze their brand presence across the web and social web. It monitors a wider range of social media platforms at its higher pricing tiers, including TikTok, LinkedIn, and Pinterest.

When choosing between Mention and Agorapulse, be sure to check out Agorapulse's 30-day free trial compared to Mention's 14-day one. 

Tip: Learn more about top Agorapulse alternatives. 

Critical Mention is a media monitoring platform that searches for keyword mentions across social media and the web, as well as international TV and radio stations and other sources.

Real-time monitoring of social media channels integrated with TV, radio, and news tracking.

In-depth analytics and custom report creation for earned media and campaign coverage.

Keyword tracking, sentiment scoring, and trend analysis.

Alerts and notifications for relevant mentions.

Best for: Traditional media teams that want social listening as a complement to broadcast/news tracking.

Reviews on Capterra and G2 show that users love its reporting features and access to broadcast coverage. Particularly if podcasts are an important part of your strategy, Critical Mention is a winner with its dedicated podcast monitoring tool. It also offers a media contacts database and an API. On the other hand, brands and agencies looking for a social media monitoring and publishing platform will prefer Mention's tools.

Talkwalker is a consumer intelligence platform that features web, social media, video, image, and podcast monitoring. It also has a Hootsuite integration to give users added social media management capabilities.

Deep social listening and analytics with AI-powered insights across social media, blogs, news, forums, and more.

Advanced sentiment analysis, trend detection, and competitor benchmarking.

Visual and video recognition to detect logos and objects in images/video content.

Custom dashboards, robust reporting tools, and multi-language support.

Best for: Brands requiring visual listening and contextual intelligence beyond text mentions.

According to G2 reviews, some users find that Talkwalker has a steep learning curve while many praise Mention for being user-friendly. Usability is an important factor to consider for organizations of all sizes but especially for larger ones that might have many team members accessing the tool. At the same time, Mention's social media publishing automation features will also appeal to small teams with big marketing duties and profiles on multiple social media channels.

Talkwalker does offer integrations with multiple CRM, project management, and social network management apps like Hootsuite and Tableau. However, Mention also has a wide range of platform integrations, including those with Zapier, Salesforce, and Zendesk. Overall, choosing between these very competitive options may come down to your organization's social media publishing needs.

Tip: Learn more about this year's top social listening tools.

The best Mention alternative isn’t just a mention tracker — it’s a true social listening engine that combines broad coverage, real-time responsiveness, AI-powered analysis, competitive context, and actionable insights. Choosing a tool with these capabilities empowers teams to protect reputation, inform strategy, and connect more deeply with audiences based on what they actually care about.

Broad coverage across multiple data sources

A strong social listening platform should pull in data from a wide range of sources — not just surface-level keyword mentions on major platforms. Look for tools that monitor:

Social networks, including more niche platforms 

Review sites and niche community platforms

This helps you capture full conversation context, not just tagged mentions.

Meltwater covers all major social platforms, plus those that are quickly becoming bigger players such as Threads and Bluesky. In 2026, Meltwater became an official Reddit Data partner, further empowering marketing and PR teams with early visibility into emerging trends and industry conversations. Additionally teams can gain visibility into how they appear in LLM results next to their competitors with GenAI Lens.

6 Best Mention Alternatives for 2026

Reddit is unlike any other social platform.

Since its launch in 2005, the site was known as the front page of the internet, while today it’s more accurately described as the heart of the internet, a place where highly engaged users can dive into anything. It’s a sprawling network of communities built for people to discuss the topics they care about, ask honest questions, and share unfiltered opinions that shape culture, purchasing decisions, and brand perception.

Research based on Meltwater’s GenAI Lens GEO analytics platform shows that Reddit is the most commonly cited social media platform in LLM responses, accounting for 32% of all social media citations. That’s why brands that want to perform well in AI need to engage authentically with relevant Reddit communities. 

Today, we’re excited to announce that Meltwater has joined Reddit’s Official Data Partner program. This partnership reinforces Meltwater’s continued access to Reddit’s rich ecosystem of real-time public sentiment and strengthens our ability to translate authentic consumer sentiment into meaningful, actionable insights for brands.

"Reddit has been a core source of consumer insight within the Meltwater platform for more than a decade, and we’ve seen its influence grow significantly over that time,” said John Box, CEO of Meltwater. “Joining Reddit’s Official Data Partner program is a natural extension of our long-standing relationship and reflects our shared commitment to delivering trusted, high-quality data. We look forward to deepening our collaboration with Reddit to continue providing customers with insight into the authentic public conversations shaping consumer behavior.”

Why Reddit Matters for Consumer and Brand Intelligence

With 121.4M Daily Active Users and more than 100K+ interest-based communities, Reddit is where people go to research products, validate decisions, and learn from others who truly care about a topic. In fact, consumers consistently rank Reddit as their preferred social platform for researching products and making decisions, often before they visit a brand website or speak with a salesperson.

Reddit is especially powerful for insights teams, marketers, and communicators, both because of its scale and how the platform works. 

Built for authentic, insight-rich conversations

Reddit’s structure naturally creates high-quality signals that are difficult to find elsewhere:

Interest-based communities create structured insight
Each subreddit is organized around a shared interest, lifestyle, product category, or passion. That structure makes it easier to uncover insights, signals, and trends by research area, whether you’re exploring skincare routines, financial planning, gaming culture, or enterprise software.

Passionate audiences who truly care
Reddit attracts people who are deeply invested in what they’re discussing. These aren’t casual, drive-by comments, they’re detailed experiences, comparisons, and recommendations from people who care enough to contribute thoughtfully.

Anonymous profiles enable honest feedback
Because Reddit prioritizes anonymity, users are more likely to share candid opinions, including frustrations, workarounds, and unmet needs they may not express elsewhere. That kind of honesty is invaluable for brands. 

Signal rises above noise
Reddit’s moderators, admins, and community voting systems help surface the most relevant, credible contributions. Upvotes and downvotes naturally elevate thoughtful responses and filter out low-quality content.

Long-form discussions add depth
With fewer character limits, Reddit fosters depth that goes far beyond surface-level reactions. The result yields richer contextual sentiment that uncovers the collective “why” and drivers behind trends, exactly what insight discovery depends on.

Turning Reddit Conversations Into Practical Insights

Through Reddit’s Data API, Meltwater surfaces and enriches public Reddit posts and comments across the platform’s 100K+ communities, transforming them into structured, searchable intelligence.

When paired with Meltwater’s leading AI analytics and listening searches, organizations can move quickly from raw sentiment to clear insight, without losing nuance. Here’s how teams are putting Reddit insights to work:

Consumer insights and lifestyle understanding
Access authentic consumer insights and decision-making, without surveys or focus groups.

Consumer journey analysis
Identify moments of friction, discovery, and delight across the purchase journey by analyzing public sentiment about researching, comparing, and choosing products.

Product innovation and unmet needs
Spot emerging use cases, creative workarounds, and gaps in the market that signal opportunities for innovation.

Cultural and category trends
Identify the cultural topics and public dialogue capturing attention, and translate those insights into sharper positioning, campaigns, and content.

Brand and competitive intelligence
See how consumers really experience your brand, products, and services, then run the same analysis on competitors to understand strengths, weaknesses, and white space.

Rising risks and reputational issues
Detect early warning signs of product concerns, customer experience breakdowns, or negative sentiment before they escalate.

For consumer insights teams
Reddit delivers deep visibility into lifestyle trends, market gaps, and real-world decision-making, grounded in organic public sentiment. These discussions reveal the “why” behind behaviors, helping insights teams move beyond surface metrics to understand the drivers and friction points shaping the market. The result is richer context for research, segmentation, and strategic recommendations.

For marketers
Reddit insights help teams understand cultural context, refine positioning, and benchmark against competitors using the same language as their customers. By tapping into organic sentiment around products, categories, and trends, marketers can create messaging, campaigns, and content that feels relevant, credible, and in tune with the moment, not forced or overly polished.

For PR and brand teams
Reddit offers early visibility into reputational risks, emerging issues, and customer experience challenges, enabling faster, more informed responses. Because public conversations often surface here first, comms teams can identify potential issues early, understand how narratives are forming, and respond with clarity and confidence before stories escalate elsewhere.

A Partnership Built on Continuity and Trust

This new designation formalizes Meltwater’s role in Reddit’s Official Data Partner program, reinforcing our commitment to responsible, high-quality data access. Importantly, this partnership continues our existing access to Reddit data, customers are not missing out on past insights, and data quality remains consistent. What changes is the clarity and confidence this partnership brings as Reddit’s influence continues to grow.

"Reddit is the most human place on the internet and home to the most authentic, interest-led conversations," said Jonathan Flesher, VP of Business Development at Reddit. "By partnering with Meltwater, we’re providing brands with the tools to responsibly tap into those insights, helping them move beyond just listening to really understanding and connecting with our communities in a meaningful way."

Bringing the Full Market Picture Into Focus

Reddit is a critical piece of today’s fragmented media landscape, but it’s most powerful when viewed in context.

By analyzing Reddit data and pairing it with AI analytics, listening searches, and comprehensive coverage across social, reviews, news, and more, Meltwater helps brands see the most complete and accurate picture of their brand, market, and consumers.

The result is faster insight, smarter decisions, and greater confidence in how you show up, wherever public perception is shaped.

Use the form below to book a Meltwater demonstration with one of our consultants, to discover exactly how your brand can unlock the power of Reddit data for consumer insights. 

Meltwater Becomes an Official Reddit Data Partner

Super Bowl 60 proved that when it comes to advertising during major cultural events, creativity and relevance matter more than ever. 

From ads leaning on nostalgia to those drumming up excitement about the future, there was no shortage of content to get audiences buzzing. But did they?

Our Explore+ analysis of social media conversations from February 8-9, 2026, shows that brands that teased their commercials ahead of the Super Bowl won audience attention long before kickoff. However, those same ads (and some new ones) shown during the game failed to generate the same enthusiasm. Meanwhile, AI emerged as a contentious flashpoint, with ads leaning on the technology facing heightened scrutiny. 

Teaser Ads: The New Must-Have for Brands Touching Down at the Super Bowl

Brands teasing their Super Bowl ads (or even sharing them in full) ahead of the big game is nothing new. In 2026, however, this practice seemed to become the standard, with just a handful of ads taking a chance on surprising viewers during the live broadcast.  

For many brands, teaser or fully released commercials ahead of high-profile, televised events are opportunities to extend the lifespans of their extremely costly ad spots and campaigns. Plus, they are highly effective in capturing audience attention and engagement, more so than their on-air counterparts. 

Our Explore+ analysis found that from January 1 to February 7, 2026, engagement with social media posts about this year’s Super Bowl commercials was 3.5x higher on average than those during and just after the live event.

Part of this discrepancy can be chalked up to the very different time periods analyzed — more than a month of conversation compared to just two days. However, with upwards of 135 million people watching the halftime show alone, according to early reports, ads that aired live had plenty of opportunity to make an impact during and after the game. 

And yet, they didn’t. As our previous analysis found, only about 1% of Super Bowl 60 conversation and engagement centered on the ads. 

Which brands had the most successful Super Bowl 2026 ad teasers?

Budweiser and Squarespace emerged as the “winners” of the pre-Super Bowl deluge of commercials this year. 

First, Budweiser’s Americana-embracing spot starring its famous Clydesdales led in share of voice (SOV), capturing 17% of the overall ad-related conversation. It also achieved 41% positive sentiment, higher than any other brand at the big game. 

Users on X, where 40% of the Budweiser commercial conversation occurred, were especially taken with the ad. Highly engaged mentions praised the American symbolism appearing throughout, as well as the usage of “Free Bird” by Lynyrd Skynyrd. 

This TikTok from MrBeast helped Squarespace rack up more engagement than any other sponsoring brand ahead of Super Bowl 60. 

Meanwhile, Squarespace “won” the Super Bowl 60 teaser race with high audience interaction, thanks largely to the starpower of internet phenom MrBeast. The brand’s teaser ads achieved an impressive 24.2% of overall pre-game, commercial-focused engagement, despite only having about 1% SOV in terms of mentions. About 99% of that audience interaction came from TikTok, where a single sponsored post from MrBeast generated about 945,000 engagements. However, that engagement didn’t necessarily result in emotional resonance with social media users — sentiment about the ad was 99% neutral. 

Super Bowl 2026 Commercials: The Brands That Got Viewers Talking for Better or Worse

Overall, 2026 wasn’t a favorable year for audience reception to Super Bowl commercials, with about 52% negative sentiment towards them on social media.

Which brands had the most successful ads broadcast during Super Bowl 2026?

Dunkin’s commercial focused on 90s nostalgia “won” the Super Bowl 60 ads conversation with 15% SOV. Mentions of stars Jennifer Aniston, Ben Affleck, and Tom Brady collectively accounted for about 57% of those mentions. But while the celebrity cameos drove visibility, engagement lagged at less than 10% of overall related engagement actions. 

Conversely, Levi’s, which didn’t release a teaser ad, came out on top in terms of audience interaction, achieving about 21% of overall engagement. As the sponsor of the Super Bowl 60 stadium, the brand was already set to achieve major reach during the game. However, its “cheeky” ad showing Levi’s jeans on the backsides of regular people and cultural icons alike positioned the brand as an exciting mainstay of American pop culture. 

This X post showing the last eight seconds of Levi’s Super Bowl 60 ad drove significant social media engagement for the denim brand, highlighting the power of online fandoms. 

Over 20% of Levi’s total engagement came from a single X post from a fan account dedicated to Doechii, who appeared at the tail end of the ad. As we saw with the highly discussed cameos during Bad Bunny’s halftime show, unannounced celebrity appearances drove significant buzz during and after the game. So while teaser ads took the spotlight, Levi’s ad proved that surprise moments from familiar faces are still effective ways to capture audience interest and investment.  

How did Super Bowl 2026 audiences feel about AI ads?

Perhaps the biggest difference between this year’s Super Bowl ads compared to previous years was the increased presence of AI-focused, -generated, or -enhanced commercials. 

From the day of to the day after the big game, about 6% of total mentions of the commercials were focused on AI. Close to 50% of those mentions were negative, largely critical of AI-generated commercials for being uninspired or low-quality, i.e.,  “AI slop”. 

Dunkin’, which used AI to make its stars look younger in keeping with the 90s nostalgia theme, dominated the AI slop conversation with 37% SOV and 42% negative sentiment. 

Not all AI-generated ads caught the ire of viewers. Svedka, which promoted the role of AI in creating its commercial, captured 63% of AI commercial-related engagement during and after the game. However, sentiment was largely neutral, suggesting attention was driven more by novelty than outrage.

Takeaways from the Social Media Discussion of Super Bowl 2026 Commercials

The biggest brand wins happened before game day, not during it.

Super Bowl ads captured focused attention during the live event, but the lead-up to the game is where brands scored big. With teaser ads achieving 3.5x higher engagement per post than in-game ads, Super Bowl 2026 made it clear that early narrative-building and social media distribution were key to campaign success this year.

Cultural resonance, not visibility, drove audience engagement.

Levi’s and Salesforce emerged as two of the most successful brands in this year’s battle of the Super Bowl ads, and their success is thanks to cultural relevance. As netizens flock to social media to participate in big cultural happenings, both brands tapped into that desire by inviting viewers (and customers) to be part of a capital M moment. Levi’s did so by highlighting their jeans as stars of iconic pop culture happenings, from Toy Story to Doechii’s current popularity. Salesforce did so with the help of YouTube king MrBeast and his massive, interactive treasure hunt offering a $1 million prize. In both cases, viewers were positioned as active participants rather than just passive prospects.

AI in Super Bowl ads became a flashpoint, not a creative advantage.

AI-driven advertising represented a relatively small share of ad conversation, but it attracted outsized negativity and perceptions of creative hollowness. Brands perceived as using AI to replace creativity—most notably Dunkin’—faced backlash, while novelty-first executions like Svedka generated attention without a strong emotional response. Overall, AI triggered more skepticism than admiration, signaling that the sparkle of new technology is not a substitute for creativity and emotional resonance.

FAQ: Social Media Buzz About Super Bowl 2026 Commercials

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