February 25, 2026
Every year, the Super Bowl offers a snapshot of where advertising is headed. This year, one message came through loud and clear for healthcare marketers: Connected TV (CTV) and live sports inventory have become foundational to modern pharma brand strategy.
What stood out was how healthcare brands approached the moment.
From Clinical Messaging to Cultural Relevance
Pharma ads this year leaned into emotion, trust, and cultural relevance. Weight management, chronic disease awareness, and preventative screening were prominent themes. More telling than the specific conditions, though, was the mindset behind the creative.
Instead of trying to prompt immediate action, brands used the Super Bowl to:
- Normalize sensitive health conversations
- Reduce stigma around chronic conditions
- Position themselves as part of everyday life, not just clinical settings
That approach reflects how behavior change actually happens. Education and awareness come first. Live sports deliver both at national scale, in an environment where viewers are highly engaged.
The Super Bowl Score
According to TV outcomes company EDO, pharma ads captured 9% of total Super Bowl share of engagement, which is on par with automotive and ahead of many traditional consumer categories.
A few performances stood out:
- Novo Nordisk delivered the strongest pharma performance of the night. Its 90-second Wegovy pill debut used humor and the Saturday Night Live cast to generate 3.7× the engagement of the median Super Bowl ad, ranking among the top ads across all industries. Airing in the fourth quarter, it showed that product-specific messaging can outperform when paired with cultural fluency and premium placement.
- Boehringer Ingelheim proved disease awareness can perform in high-profile moments. Its action-inspired spot starring actresses Octavia Spencer and Sofía Vergara encouraged screening conversations and delivered 2.1× the median Super Bowl engagement.
- Novartis took a longer-term view. For the second consecutive year, the company used the Super Bowl to spotlight public health, this time promoting a prostate cancer blood test. While engagement ranked lower on EDO’s scale, iSpot reported the highest pharma likeability score (643). In healthcare, trust and favorability are meaningful leading indicators.
Beyond traditional pharma, newer healthcare brands also broke through:
- Hims & Hers paired a bold access message with celebrity storytelling. Featuring rapper Common, the ad ranked 19th overall and drove 2.2× the median engagement, showing how relevance and accessibility resonate at scale.
- Ro leaned into authenticity with tennis champion Serena Williams. While ranking lower overall, the spot reinforced how credible, recognizable voices help emerging healthcare brands break through on the biggest stage.
The bottom line is that sports engagement rewards relevance, authenticity, and smart creative that grabs attention.
Proof That Live Sports Work Harder
The Super Bowl may be the biggest stage, but the strongest performance gains for pharma show up across the entire NFL season.
A separate analysis by EDO showed that pharma ads airing during NFL games were 104% more effective than the average pharma ad running in broadcast or cable prime time.
The power of consistency is especially evident in brand performance over time. While Eli Lilly’s Super Bowl spot delivered lower engagement, its Zepbound campaign emerged as a regular-season standout, proving over 500% more effective than the average broadcast pharma ad during the NFL season.
The takeaway is simple: live sports create momentum. Brands that stay present throughout the season capture the full benefit.
Why CTV Changes the Equation for Live Sports
Another shift became clear this year: what happens after the ad airs matters as much as the placement itself.
CTV now allows healthcare marketers to:
- Extend live sports moments into follow-on household reach across channels
- Sequence messaging across screens and formats
In other words, a Super Bowl placement now serves as the starting point for a broader, sustained strategy rather than a standalone impression.
Turning Big Moments Into Sustained Impact with DeepIntent
This is where DeepIntent plays a critical role.
The Super Bowl may be a single moment, but DeepIntent helps healthcare marketers turn it into a broader CTV and live sports strategy, extending premium exposure into intelligent, outcomes-driven activation grounded in healthcare-specific signals.
With DeepIntent, brands can:
- Activate live sports and CTV inventory using healthcare-specific signals
- Concentrate reach from mass broadcasts into verified patient and HCP households
- Optimize in real time using health-relevant KPIs like Audience Quality (AQ) and scripts
- Measure impact beyond vanity metrics - connecting awareness to real outcomes like doctor visits and new patient starts
The Super Bowl remains advertising’s most powerful spotlight. But in 2026, pharma proved that the real advantage comes from pairing that spotlight with CTV intelligence, live sports scale, and performance measurement that matters.
Healthcare marketers no longer have to trade off between brand building and performance, or broad reach and precision. With the right approach, they can drive all the above.
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