• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, February 7, 2024

Microsoft will run the first Super Bowl ad in four years on Sunday to showcase Copilot on mobile and desktop.

The last Super Bowl ad focused on gaming, but this time there are no gaming consoles, Window PCs or spreadsheets.

The 60-second 2024 Super Bowl ad -- called "Watch Me" -- shows how it works on a mobile phone.

This ad is all about everyday people who use Microsoft Copilot. It features the generative artificial intelligence (GAI) assistant, highlighting how people can use the tool to learn and be more creative.

Created by Panay Films, the ad has been designed to tap into the growing use of consumers since it launched a year ago and brand Copilot as a tool for everyone, every day.

Andrew Panay, CEO, Panay Films, said Microsoft has empowered the team since they began working together more than 12 years ago.

Carat/Dentsu is the media agency of record. Media supporting the Super Bowl campaign includes Search with Bing, Google, YouTube, and social sites such as TikTok, Meta, and X.

As of February 2024, a 30-second ad spot during the 2024 Super Bowl is estimated to cost around $7 million. 

Jason Fischel, senior director of search and AI product marketing at Microsoft, said during a virtual presentation on Wednesday that since the launch of Bing Chart, Copilot has seen 5 billion chats and 5 billion images. Those numbers are doubling quarter over quarter. 

The story in the ad begins with people having moments of skepticism about achieving their dream, but these moments turn into confidence with help from Microsoft’s AI-driven Copilot.

The spot serves as a broad launch for new features. The ad rolls out with a redesigned Copilot experience, image-editing capabilities powered by the Microsoft Designer, video highlights in Edge and the ability to summarize content.

Copilot was built on OpenAI’s latest GPT-4 and DALL-E 3 large language models. Now with multimodal capabilities, which means it integrates text, images and videos.

The goals highlighted in the ad were generated by Copilot by asking the chatbot what people hope and dream are and responded with numerous themes. The ad will run during the fourth quarter of the game.

Microsoft also will make Copilot available on Google Play and Apple’s App Store -- as well as via web experience -- during the Big Game.