Are you ready for some football ads?

Don't expect any crypto ads at this year's Super Bowl. Last year's Super Bowl ads aged like milk Super Bowl LVI was only a year ago, but when you look at some of the ads we saw then, it feels like a much different time: one where the future of the internet was all about cryptocurrency, NFTs, and the metaverse. Companies that hadn’t even existed 10 or even three years prior spent big money promoting themselves as major Web3 players, and older, established companies tried to stake their claim in the same world. That world wouldn’t last long. In the past year, Web3 fumbled, Big Tech stocks turned over, and AI is currently charging down the field as the hottest thing in a Silicon Valley that otherwise doesn’t have much to cheer for. The big splashy Super Bowl ads of 2022 are almost laughable in retrospect. Unless you’re one of the celebrities now facing a lawsuit for promoting crypto exchanges. Or one of the millions of people who lost money on crypto investments, thanks at least in part to the large-scale fraud that permeated the industry. Or any of the thousands of tech workers who were laid off in the past few months. There will be no crypto ads in this year’s broadcast. A Fox Sports executive vice president of ad sales [told the Associated Press]( that four crypto companies had actually booked or were close to booking ads this year even amid crypto’s falling prices, but they all [bowed out]( following FTX’s collapse. That’s a complete reversal from what we saw during Super Bowl LVI. There were so many ads from so many crypto exchanges that some people called last year’s big game [the Crypto Bowl](. Coinbase spent $14 million for a [minute-long ad spot]( that was just a QR code bouncing around the screen. Crypto.com put up an ad featuring Matt Damon, who told us that “fortune favors the brave,” Etoro promoted “the power of social investing,” and a little company called FTX paid Larry David to urge us not to miss out on crypto. There was also Binance, which had an anti-Super Bowl ad [campaign](. Well, the Matt Damon ad is [no longer available]( on YouTube, though that hasn’t stopped it from being a [repeated]( [source]( [of ridicule]( for the actor. Coinbase laid off 20 percent of its workforce — [twice](. Etoro also had a round of layoffs and [abandoned plans]( to go public via a SPAC. And FTX, of course, became the [poster child]( for the implosion of a fraud-filled and underregulated industry. Larry David [got sued]( for appearing in its ads. The price of Bitcoin is down nearly 50 percent from where it was during Super Bowl LVI. Crypto, which is still volatile and barely regulated, isn’t the only industry that fell from grace last year. Seemingly less risky initiatives from Big Tech companies also got Super Bowl ad play in 2022. Amazon’s Alexa commercial, which starred real-life married couple Scarlett Johansson and Colin Jost, [cracked us up]( as Alexa’s mind-reading powers caused marital difficulties and awkward dinner parties. Of the thousands of employees Amazon laid off at the end of 2022, [many worked]( on Alexa, which Amazon is [reportedly]( scaling back on because the project loses billions of dollars a year. And then there was Meta, which tried to sell both its Quest 2 VR headsets and its vision for the metaverse in a Super Bowl ad. It featured a creepy animatronic dog that loses its Chuck E. Cheese-like music gig, but with the help of a Meta VR headset, is able to play music again in Meta’s Horizon Worlds. But VR headset sales [have shrunk]( in the last year, and Meta’s stock price plummeted in 2022. The company ended the year with the largest round of [layoffs]( in its history. The NFL even [offered]( Super Bowl NFTs last year in a partnership with Ticketmaster, a company that has since attracted the ire of [every single Taylor Swift fan]( and also [much of Congress]( over its ticket sales monopoly. This year’s ads will still feature some glimpses of the (possible) future along with the standard Super Bowl commercial fare. There [will be]( food, alcohol, and cars — including EVs [again](, which are now easier to find in stock and also [eligible]( for tax credits. Apple, the only Big Tech company that hasn’t had layoffs so far, is [sponsoring]( the halftime show. Netflix partnered with GM and Michelob for ads. Google [will advertise]( its Pixel phones and their photo editing tools, which use AI. Speaking of AI, we nearly got an ad that incorporated the hottest generative AI tool going these days: ChatGPT. Avocados From Mexico, a Mexican avocado advocacy organization, had [planned]( to advertise those avocados with ChatGPT. The plan was to put a QR code in its ad that took users to a landing page where they could use ChatGPT to “engage with the brand and share the result of that engagement through their networks,” Avocados From Mexico’s vice president of marketing and innovation Ivonne Kinser [told The Drum]( (she called this “avocado intelligence”). But the avocados were not able to get the ChatGPT feature together in time, and [it was pulled](. There’s always Super Bowl LVIII. If the [furor]( over generative AI keeps up through the year, next year’s big game may be festooned with ads from all the tech companies [showing off]( their new generative AI-boosted services in flashy ads featuring the biggest stars in all the land — or maybe just AI-generated versions of them. Maybe we’ll call it the AI Bowl. As for Web3, it hasn’t completely gone away. A gaming company will be [giving away]( NFTs to promote its games in an ad purchased [way back]( in the rosier times of October. The NFL [announced]( there will be a Super Bowl concert in the metaverse-ish platform Roblox on Friday, which will replay every hour on the hour until Super Bowl Sunday. The league said there will be a “collection of digital items” for sale in conjunction with the concert as well. On February 4, the NFL also launched a Roblox game called NFL Super Tycoon, which “simulates an authentic business experience,” including managing payroll and taxes — surely, the very things that people are seeking in a video game about football. It doesn’t look like there will be any official Ticketmaster Super Bowl NFTs for LVII, but I wouldn’t rule it out yet. —Sara Morrison, senior reporter [Microsoft chair and CEO Satya Nadella standing in front of a wall-sized screen displaying the new Bing search engine.]( Courtesy of Dan DeLong/Microsoft [Google is scrambling to catch up to Bing, of all things]( [Google bookended Microsoft’s big AI search announcement with underwhelming AI news of its own.](   [President Joe Biden talked about the perils of noncompete agreements at his 2023 State of the Union address.]( Jacquelyn Martin/AFP via Getty Images [What banning noncompetes could mean for the US workforce]( [President Biden wants to change how we think about anti-competitive behavior.](   [Sundar Pichai speaks at a summit, gesturing with both hands in front of a yellow background.]( Kyle Grillot/Bloomberg via Getty Images [Here comes Bard, Google’s version of ChatGPT]( [The new AI chat bot is available to “trusted testers” for now and will be released to the public in the “coming weeks.”](    [Learn more about RevenueStripe...](   [Elon Musk in a suit and a mask in front of a courthouse, with a camera in the background. ]( Bloomberg/Contributor [The trials of Elon Musk]( [A jury found the Tesla CEO not liable in a shareholder lawsuit, but the case revealed a lot about Musk’s refusal to back down.](   [A close-up of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman wearing a black shirt and black sunglasses.]( Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images [The AI boom is here, and so are the lawsuits]( [What can Napster tell us about the future?](   Support our work Recode is free for all, thanks in part to financial support from our readers. 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