GoDaddy made its return to advertising during the big game, while Squarespace remained consistent. OpenAI dipped its toe in the water, and Google’s Gemini jumped in with two feet. How did it all go?
More than 127 million people watched the Super Bowl this year, and somewhere around 20% say they watch just for the commercials, theoretically justifying the $8M that Fox charged for a 30-second spot this year. That price is too rich for most companies, but this year saw a handful of cloud and AI players ante up for the reported $4.60 ROI per dollar spent.
GoDaddy vs. Squarespace
To many, Super Bowl ads are the first thing people think when they hear the name GoDaddy. You may remember 2009 when NASCAR driver Danica Patrick had her movements in the shower controlled by men, with the commercial ending when another woman joined Patrick in the shower. In 2013, model Bar Rafaeli passionately made out with “Walter,” an IT nerd.
But after 2017, GoDaddy went dark on Super Bowl Sundays, leaving viewers bereft of the edgy conversation fuel they had come to anticipate. Eight years passed before GoDaddy decided to re-enter the ring in 2025. (Perhaps marketing budgets are a bit freer this year with GoDaddy’s stock price nearly doubling in the past 12 months?) When CloudFest USA contacted GoDaddy to ask why they elected to make their return this year, they pointed to their innovation.
“After eight years away from the Big Game, GoDaddy was thrilled to return. We took a step back to double down on innovation, focusing on building and refining small business offerings like GoDaddy Airo,” said Fara Howard, GoDaddy Chief Marketing Officer, “On Sunday, we used advertising’s biggest stage as an opportunity to introduce this game-changing experience to millions of small businesses.”
This time, however, a mostly mature, industry-leading GoDaddy replaced the disruptive firestarter of yore, offering up a sanitized ad featuring long-time character actor Walton Goggins – they did still find a way to sneak in a “Uranus” joke.
To promote its new AI product, GoDaddy Airo, the commercial plays on imposter syndrome, as Goggins runs through a variety of scenarios in which he is clearly out of place, before ending with his “hardest role yet” or small business owner. That’s where GoDaddy comes in, with the Airo using AI to build his site and content and make it look like he knows what he’s doing. After years off from advertising during the Super Bowl, GoDaddy stood out by fitting in.
Squarespace has never taken the same approach as GoDaddy, instead opting for the celebrity-focused and content-forward approach to the Super Bowl ad. Over the previous four years, Squarespace ads have featured Martin Scorsese, Adam Driver, Zendaya, and Dolly Parton, respectively. In 2025, Squarespace took the same tact, hiring actor-of-the-moment Barry Keoghan and having him channel his Banshees of Inisherin role as a simple Irishman (not to be confused with his Saltburn role as a murderous gold digger).
Rather non-descript, the ad takes us back to pre-internet Ireland, with Keoghan flinging laptops at shopkeepers, presenting the potential business sites these small business owners could have with Squarespace. With a Squarespace website, the ad presents, your business rises to the next level.
While companies often fail to clearly present what the commercial is advertising, Squarespace doesn’t fall into that trap, setting a whopping pace of a Squarespace mention every three seconds or so. Needless to say, any viewer with the television off mute knew exactly what product Keoghan was presenting, so at least it had that going for it.
OpenAI vs. Google Gemini
Making its Super Bowl commercial debut OpenAI sprung for a 60-second commercial to promote ChatGPT, although if you tuned out after 48 seconds instead of making it to the end, you probably still have no idea what the ad with the dots was all about. There’s always next year!
And yet, OpenAI did avoid controversy. Not so lucky was Google’s Gemini ad targeted to Wisconsin viewers. Google released the ad ahead of the Super Bowl and immediately ran into trouble. The ad originally claimed that gouda cheese accounts for more than 50% of global cheese consumption, a claim that immediately drew the ire of some online bloggers. Jerry Dischler, Google’s President of Cloud Applications, then went online and defended the claim and Gemini, saying “Gemini is grounded in the Web.” Just, apparently, not grounded enough to support keeping the claim in the ad, with Google swapping out the ad, for one that may not have been as… gouda.
What Does it All Mean?
Nothing! Each of these companies is worth billions of dollars, so $8 million is little more than a drop in the bucket to get themselves in front of the largest single-event audience of the year. But now…you probably watched the game, right? Ask yourself, did you remember these ads before reading this post?
Join CloudFest USA in Miami
November 5-6, 2025
