Celebrity recall: Who scored big in Super Bowl 2026 ads

Super Bowl Sunday is almost as much about the ads as it is about the football. Like is the case most years, this year’s commercials were absolutely overflowing with famous faces. But in a crowded field, who are the celebrities that actually stand out?

To find out, we asked U.S. Super Bowl viewers which celebrities and public figures they remembered seeing in a 2026 Super Bowl commercial. The list was limited to 60 personalities, with the catch being that three were invalid names – i.e., they either aren’t real or they are real but just didn’t feature in a commercial.

Lady Gaga topped the Super Bowl ad recall leaderboard, and it wasn’t particularly close

Lady Gaga sits at the top of the recall list, with 43% of viewers saying they remembered seeing her in a Super Bowl commercial. Her recall was notably higher among women (48%) than men (39%). Part of the reason for the popstar’s high recall would be the fact that she was everywhere – she appeared in The Pokémon Company’s “What’s Your Favorite?” campaign, was the background voice in the emotional “Won’t you be my neighbor?” ad by Rocket Mortgage, and also featured prominently in the halftime show.

Slam Dunkin at the Super Bowl

Not far behind Gaga are a cluster of familiar faces: Jennifer Aniston (39%), Tom Brady (39%), and Ben Affleck (37%), who all featured in Dunkin’s “Good Will Dunkin." The spot parodied the movie “Good Will Hunting”, with Affleck leading a packed star roster that included Aniston and Brady. Also featured, among others, were Ted Danson (29%), Matt LeBlanc (25%) Jason Alexander (21%), with the actors contributing to the 90s sitcom vibe that the commercial was going for – the ad used AI to de-age the celebs.

Uber Eats proved that repetition works

Matthew McConaughey (34%) lands in the top five, and it’s hard to miss why: Uber Eats went heavy on pre-game and in-game celebrity creative. The brand had already released a large batch of spots before game day, with McConaughey and Bradley Cooper (26.3%) pushing a tongue-in-cheek theory that football was invented as a way to sell food – a playful “food-ball” premise that underpinned Uber Eats’ entire Super Bowl campaign.

Nostalgia (still) sells

A few of the strongest performers feel like they were engineered for instant recognition. The Backstreet Boys (31%) broke into the top tier with their T-Mobile commercial tie-in. In addition, crypto exchange Coinbase’s 2026 Super Bowl commercial leaned into nostalgia by turning the Backstreet Boys’ 1997 hit “Everybody (Backstreet’s Back)” into a karaoke-style singalong during the broadcast. The one-minute spot displayed the song’s lyrics in a lo-fi karaoke aesthetic (with some lines playfully tweaked toward Coinbase’s messaging) before revealing the brand at the end.

Ben Stiller (31%) featured high on the list too — appearing in Instacart’s musical alongside Benson Boone (14%). The Spike Jonze–directed commercial featured the duo as retro European techno-disco performers in banana suits.

Transformations and reunions: The reliable mid-table recall engines

Guy Fieri’s (31%) Bosch spot turned him into “Justaguy,” with a toned-down look designed to be jarring precisely because it’s so un-Fieri.

Reunions proved to be memorable too. De-aged versions of Jeff Goldblum (27%) and Sam Neill (8%) were featured in Xfinity’s Jurassic Park callback.

The false recall check

Now for the fun part: the names viewers remembered despite them not being in Super Bowl commercials.

Kid Rock was remembered by 8% of viewers. He didn’t need to be in an actual game-day ad to show up in people’s minds – this illustrates that if someone is prominent in the broader Super Bowl conversation (especially via alternative programming and social media), it can be enough to plant that individual in false memories of a commercial.

Betty White was remembered by 3% of viewers, which is a reminder that misattribution is real. The beloved actress and comedian, who passed away in 2021, did not appear in a 2026 Super Bowl commercial, but her long association with memorable ads from previous editions may still linger in viewers’ minds.

A closer look at who remembered whom

The overall rankings tell one story, but the demographic splits reveal a few sharper contrasts.

Sports figures skew heavily male. Tom Brady is remembered by 47% of men compared with 31% of women. His fellow ex-NFL stars Rob Gronkowski (29% vs. 14%) and Peyton Manning (33% vs. 19%) show similarly wide gaps.

On the flip side, high-profile female celebrities like Lady Gaga (47% vs 39%) and Kendall Jenner (22% vs. 14%) register more strongly among women.

Generationally, the divide between digital-native personalities and legacy stars can be especially pronounced. Sabrina Carpenter is the second most recalled Super Bowl celeb among Gen Z at 42%, behind only Lady Gaga (52%). Yet the 26-year-old performer came in at just 14% among Baby Boomers – well in the bottom half of the 60-person list.

MrBeast (33% Gen Z vs. 10% Boomers), IShowSpeed (22% vs. 1%) and Druski (18% vs. 4%) underline how strongly younger audiences respond to internet-first personalities. In contrast, older celebs like Ted Danson (40% Boomers vs. 9% Gen Z) and Jason Alexander (27% Boomers vs. 5% Gen Z) skew decisively older.

The generational rankings chart below makes this even clearer: the “top five” looks very different depending on whether you’re Gen Z, Millennial, Gen X or Baby Boomer.

Methodology: YouGov polled 925 U.S. adults, who watched the Super Bowl, online on February 12. The survey was carried out through YouGov Surveys: Self-serve. Data is weighted by age, gender, race, political affiliation, education level and region.