Good morning. Super Bowl ad results are rarely as clear as the game’s final score, but at these prices, you’ve got to try.

Budweiser’s story of friendship between a Clydesdale and an American eagle was the winning Super Bowl ad by some measures:

• “American Icons” won USA Today’s Ad Meter—an unscientific popularity contest open to any adult U.S. citizen who signs up to vote online, but a well-known annual presence since 1989.
• Budweiser’s ad was also the most-mentioned on social media during the game, as tracked by Brandwatch.
• And it came in first for social-media engagement among ads without celebrities, according to media tracking firm Meltwater.

Among the ads that did use celebrities, Dunkin’ got the most engagement by casting its “Good Will Hunting” parody with a who’s who of hit ’90s sitcoms.

Patrick Coffee points out the trend for the WSJ Leadership Institute:

This year, a bigger flood of AI ads suited up—and largely still struggled.

A few bright spots for the sector suggest that you can run through a checklist of product attributes if you must, as long as you bring some entertainment value too, or maybe offer to locate missing pets.

Two AI-infused ads tied for 10th place on the Ad Meter, a strong showing:

• the Amazon commercial depicting Chris Hemsworth as comically afraid that the family Alexa+ assistant will kill him
• and Ring’s ad promoting a computer-vision feature to find your lost dog.

Google’s Gemini ad meanwhile ranked first with the annual ad-review panel at Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management by combining feature demonstrations with a human scenario.

Anthropic’s funny attack on OpenAI also got an “A” grade from Kellogg.

Reminder: It all depends who you ask, what you ask them and what the advertiser needed to achieve in the first place.

That same Anthropic commercial that Kellogg liked landed all the way down at No. 46 on the Ad Meter. OpenAI was No. 45.

Personally, I liked both of those ads more than that.

The WSJ Leadership Institute’s Megan Graham writes for the newsletter:

Unless you’re a fast-food freak like me and my fiancé, chicken nuggets probably aren’t on your usual menu for a romantic dinner. McDonald’s is trying to change that, at least for one night.

A new Valentine’s Day promotion offers free McNugget Caviar kits—including Paramount Caviar’s Baerii Sturgeon caviar, crème fraîche, a mother-of-pearl caviar spoon and a gift card to procure fresh nuggets—to a “limited” number of consumers who sign up online today. (McDonald’s wouldn’t tell me exactly how many it’s giving out, leading me to believe the recipient list is going to be limited indeed.)

The chain told me the idea came from consumers who were already making the pairing on their own.

I tried out the bougie nuggs—or as one Redditor called them, “elevated stoner food”—myself last night. In ominous news for my bank account, the briny umami of caviar was an excellent foil for a crunchy bite of nugget.

But McDonald’s likely isn’t trying to convince big numbers of caviar connoisseurs to pack the drive-through. This is a company that credited its third-quarter sales lift to its increased spending on value meals, new products and marketing, all part of its broader efforts to win back cost-conscious consumers who have pulled back on eating out.

The chain reports its fourth-quarter results on Wednesday.

Doug McMillon stepped down as CEO of Walmart on Jan. 31 after 12 years, a stretch in which the big-box retailer went from looking like easy prey for e-commerce rivals to a trillion-dollar transformation success story.

But before he left, he talked with WSJ Leadership Institute CEO Alan Murray for the latest episode of the “Leaders” podcast. Watch it on wsj.com or listen on Apple or Spotify.

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ChatGPT’s much-discussed ads test has begun on the free and Go subscription tier. Free users can opt out of ads in exchange for reduced chatbot replies per day. [Axios] 

Inside OpenAI’s decision to kill the AI model that people loved too much. [WSJ] 

S4 Capital is pitching “subscriptions” to its agency services as an AI-era alternative to the billable hour. [Digiday]

WPP plans to put creative agencies including Ogilvy, VML and AKQA under a new umbrella called WPP Creative, although the shops will keep their brands and still operate independently from one another. [FT] 

Chappell Roan said she is no longer represented by the talent agency run by Casey Wasserman, who has been criticized for his recently revealed emails with Ghislaine Maxwell. [NBC] 

Spotify continued to add users in the fourth quarter as it expanded access to audiobooks globally and added more features. [WSJ]

Retailers are weighing the pros and cons of “just keep it” return policies. [Modern Retail] 

Gaming marketing veteran Christopher Erb and his agency Tripleclix are becoming part of CAA’s marketing division. [Variety]

MrBeast is getting into finance with the acquisition of Stepp, a banking app targeting younger consumers. [CNBC]