Budweiser clocks another Super Bowl ad win in recall report

In the days immediately following the Super Bowl, ad industry chatter is all about which ads people loved—or hated—the most. But as time goes on, marketers start to get a sense of whether or not their $8-million-plus campaigns are actually driving business impact.

Just over a week after the Big Game, data from marketing analytics company Big Chalk indicates which advertisers may be winning in the long term, based on surveys of more than 2,000 consumers that the company ran in the 24 to 48 hours following the Super Bowl that tested recall of the commercials.

Budweiser, Pepsi Zero Sugar, Dunkin’, and Lay’s—all brands that made the top 5 of the USA Today Ad Meter—clocked the highest unaided awareness, according to data shared exclusively with Marketing Brew. Big Chalk defines unaided awareness as the share of people who can name an advertiser from the game without being prompted by a list.

History repeats: Budweiser’s Super Bowl supremacy continues. The AB InBev beer brand has won the Ad Meter for the past two years in a row, and it also secured the highest unaided awareness in Big Chalk’s surveys in both 2025 and 2026.

• About 32% of respondents to the 2026 survey named Budweiser as a Super Bowl advertiser, up 10 percentage points from last year.
• Pepsi Zero Sugar, meanwhile, clocked about 20% unaided awareness.
• Dunkin’ had about 17% unaided awareness, up from 9.5% last year, when the brand also came in third place on Big Chalk’s list. But that’s down from about 20% in 2024, when Dunkin’ had the highest unaided awareness.
• Lay’s came in fourth this year, with about 7.5% unaided awareness.

Bright spot: Last year’s unaided awareness results presented some cause for concern among advertisers, when the average across the top 10 on Big Chalk’s list dropped slightly, from 10% in 2024 to 8.5% in 2025.

At the time, Big Chalk partner Rick Miller told us that was likely at least in part due to the blow-out nature of the game. While this year’s Super Bowl wasn’t exactly a nail-biter, unaided awareness among the top 10 advertisers climbed back up to 10.4%, according to Big Chalk.

A little help: In addition to unaided awareness, Big Chalk also tested ad attribution, which the company defines as “the ability, with slight prompting, of consumers to map back a specific plot line, celebrity, or piece of creative in an ad to the brand that sponsored it.” It’s a metric that runs parallel to unaided awareness, according to the report, but is more tied to “key value propositions” and brand messaging than brand names.

As was the case with unaided awareness, more consumers were able to match brands to the plot of their ads in 2026 than in 2025. Still, attribution wasn’t as strong as it was in 2024, Big Chalk found.

• Toyota had the highest attribution score this year, with about 46% of respondents matching the brand to a description of its ad that read, “grandson takes grandfather for a ride.”
• Budweiser followed, with about 44% of respondents accurately matching plot to ad.
• Bud Light came in at No. 3, with an attribution score of about 33%.
• Grubhub, Xfinity, Hims & Hers, Poppi, and Pringles rounded out the top 8.

The average proper attribution score across the top 8 advertisers this year was about 31%, “notably ahead of last year’s” average score of about 22%, according to the report.

“Although celebrity presence is important, compelling storylines are equally as important—and sometimes more so—when it comes to driving proper attribution,” the report’s authors wrote. “If the ad’s storyline is strong enough, consumers will remember the brand and remember the message.”