My title is Fred Cunha, and I am going to each Super Bowl however have by no means seen the sport.

For 51 weeks of the yr, I function vp of partnerships growth at XR Excessive Attain, a task nicely aligned with my 25-plus years of broadcast and digital media trade management. It’s the work I do throughout the different week that has earned me the title of Tremendous Bowl advert quarterback and MVP for over a decade—with out ever stepping foot within the stadium.

You might suppose the quarterback reference on this op-ed title is an apparent nod to my outstanding resemblance to Tom Brady. Not true. Right here’s the deal: Whereas there’s loads of consideration on stay occasions and the challenges that entrepreneurs and publishers face in making advert experiences seamless, I’ve been within the trenches of creating it occur for years. I’m happy with the work I do to make inventive perfection the usual for each advert no matter platform or channel. The ads placed for the Super Bowl are probably the most outstanding and expensive of the yr; if they don’t air with out a hitch, hundreds of thousands of {dollars}, model reputations, entrepreneurs’ jobs, and AOR statuses will all be at stake. 


The opportunities are endless, if brands and the NFL are willing to think bigger.

Nonetheless, you would possibly suppose, within the age of AI, does it actually take a human within the loop to QA the Tremendous Bowl advertisements? The reply is sure, however it might not be what you suppose. There are three main the reason why Tremendous-Fred, and now Tremendous-Jaime (who joined me final yr at CBS for the primary time), stay probably the most sought-after teammates on the networks that air the Tremendous Bowl.

The primary is the interaction between people and know-how. On some ranges, AI and environment friendly inventive workflows have definitely made analyzing Super Bowl ads a lot quicker, permitting the stakeholders—me, the community, the advertiser, and the company—to do our cautious evaluation work in hours as a substitute of days.

However AI can solely go to date. One factor it can’t make up for, and has typically been the rationale the networks ask me to “eat on premise” and “fill up on Vitamin C,” is the existence of the unsurprisingly nervous sponsor. For each main model CMO that walks right into a Tremendous Bowl advert screening session cool as a cucumber, there are 4 extra which can be jittery and questioning each cut up second of their advertisements. Previous to these classes, the know-how we use can simply decide if the advertisements, actually, meet the specs and are those their groups so meticulously produced for his or her huge second.