Good morning. Today, big brands sometimes seem like they missed a memo about YouTube; AI-industry advertising takes a sharper tone; and (human) celebrities show their staying power in Super Bowl ad strategy.

YouTube and its creator army appear to have won the battle for TV viewers, trouncing all rivals for watch time on U.S. television sets since early last year, but the fight for some brands’ TV ad spending still isn’t over.

“The budgets that are allocated for YouTube, both from a media perspective and a creative and production perspective, are still lagging dramatically behind the budgets that are allocated to TV projects,” said Frank Cooper III, chief marketing officer at Visa.

The disparity is frustrating not only creators but also some marketing executives trying to convince their companies to do more with YouTube, Patrick Coffee reports in a deep look for the WSJ Leadership Institute.

They worry that failing to stay close to audiences means missed opportunities or, worse, leaving openings for rivals.

What’s the problem?

• Many big TV brands still bucket YouTube in “digital,” pitting it against the likes of TikTok instead of broadcast and cable.
• They often prioritize deals with YouTube creators over programmatic pre-roll buys, deals that can be slower to realize.

Don’t cry for YouTube:

Its ad business is incredibly successful by any measure, beating analysts’ estimates in the most recent quarter with $10.26 billion in revenue and 15% growth. Google parent Alphabet reports new results later today.

The chatbot marketing wars are kicking into high gear as Claude developer Anthropic uses its Super Bowl ad debut to take aim at OpenAI’s ChatGPT.

The commercial dramatizes the prospect of ads that intrude into chatbot replies, Suzanne Vranica writes:

“Ads are coming to AI,” the commercial concludes. “But not to Claude.”

The context:

Viewers may remember recent ChatGPT ads demonstrating how the bot might help meet goals for users—including a young man in a park doing pull-ups.

Jabbing a rival in front of the biggest TV audience all year shows new heat in chatbots’ competition. It will be fascinating to see which argument looks right in the end: that ad revenue is essential to pay for all this compute, as industry people say, or that ads create an exploitable weak spot in user trust.

Keep an eye out: 

OpenAI this Sunday will run a Super Bowl commercial of its own, with a message that’s still under wraps. 

The WSJ Leadership Institute’s Katie Deighton reports on a nightmare (to many creatives, at least) that seems deferred another year:

Some Super Bowl ads this year will promote AI but they tentatively seem to have been marked safe from slop themselves, with the bulk of advertisers settling on the tried-and-true strategy of casting real, human celebrities.

Grubhub, the food delivery service acquired last year by Wonder, brought together George Clooney and “Bugonia” director Yorgos Lanthimos in a British castle for a Super Bowl spot to hype the end of fees on orders over $50.

While AI helps the company further down the marketing funnel, “it's just not there yet” to deliver the humanity and emotion required in a high-stakes Super Bowl ad, said Marnie Kain, Grubhub’s head of brand marketing.

“Yorgos even shoots in 35mm, which is like a bygone era, but it brings so much texture to the storytelling,” Kain said at an event hosted by ad testing company System1.

Even the existentially challenged polar bear that appears in Pepsi’s Super Bowl commercial was created by CGI, not AI, the brand confirmed to me this week. (Coca-Cola, in contrast, used AI to generate its last two big holiday campaigns.)

And Xfinity used non-AI Hollywood techniques to de-age the original “Jurassic Park” actors reprising their roles for its Super Bowl ad, according to a company spokesperson.

Every year more or less since online video came along, Super Bowl advertisers have had to decide whether to release their ads early.

A pre-release lets marketers rack up views and publicity when people are still curious about the approaching adpalooza, but costs them the chance to make a bigger splash when everyone’s watching at once.

Grubhub says it released its commercial before the Super Bowl partly for practical reasons: so party hosts knew ahead of time about its fee-free pitch for big orders. Rival delivery service Uber Eats similarly released its Super Bowl ad on Tuesday.

There’s one more advantage to going earlier.

Posting your ad online also lets you offer a longer version—or insist on it.

Instacart has released the 30-second cut of its ad that will run during the game, for example, but also a 2:30 version if you want to really get into its world-building.

And Volkswagen on Tuesday released just the 90-second cut of its Super Bowl spot, despite only paying for 30 seconds of time during the game itself.

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Now that Southwest has done away with open seating, it can run a streaming-and-regional TV ad during the Super Bowl about how chaotic the old policy was. [Adweek] 

Why the odds are against a big audience for Kid Rock and Turning Point USA’s counterprogramming to the Super Bowl halftime show. [Front Office Sports] 

Volkswagen’s Super Bowl ad brings back the “Drivers Wanted” tagline. [Ad Age] 

How “Real Housewives” and “Summer House” network Bravo became an incubator for personality-driven brands. [Inc.] 

Lego and several other advertisers are trying to get faster and more nimble online by bulking up their in-house programmatic media buying teams. [Digiday] 

Los Angeles Lakers star Luka Doncic introduced a direct-to-fan “universe” on Shopify called 77X, where he will sell merch, collectibles, content and experiences. [Fashion United]

The New York Times reported higher fourth-quarter profit as a decline in news-only subscription revenue was offset by an increase in bundle and other single-product subscription revenue. [WSJ] 

Olive Garden parent Darden Restaurants is giving up on its Caribbean-inspired Bahama Breeze chain, which dates back to 1996. [Restaurant Business]