Hims & Hers’ 2025 Super Bowl commercial generated plenty of conversation—and controversy—leading up to the big game. It took aim at the American weight loss industry, including Big Pharma makers of high-priced GLP-1 drugs, and touted its own compounded obesity medications as a less expensive alternative, drawing the ire of advocacy groups and legislators concerned about the ad’s lack of information about the compounded drugs’ potential side effects and exemption from FDA oversight.
Whether in spite of that controversy or because of it, the telehealth company’s bold swing paid off in at least one sense: The “Sick of the System” spot not only generated the highest engagement of all pharma-related ads that aired during Sunday night’s broadcast, according to TV advertising analyst EDO, but also ranked in the top 10 of all Super Bowl ads across categories.
EDO measures engagement based on “the TV-driven engagement for the advertised brand or product that occurs immediately after airing.” Hims & Hers’ commercial took the fifth spot among the 94 ads EDO analyzed, with an engagement score of 771, suggesting it drove about 7.7 times more engagement than the median.
Novartis took a distant second to Hims & Hers, with a tongue-in-cheek commercial that turned the attention typically paid to women’s chests on its head, asking viewers to instead devote that attention toward undergoing regular breast cancer screening. A 15-second teaser for the ad aired just before kickoff Sunday night and garnered an engagement index of 128, per EDO. The full minute-long spot—Novartis’ first-ever Super Bowl ad—hit screens during the game’s second quarter and, interestingly, ranked slightly lower than the teaser, with a score of 116 that placed it 37th overall.
Next up was Pfizer’s LL Cool J-soundtracked spot, which ran during the first quarter and ranked 58th, by EDO’s count. It earned an engagement index of 55, meaning it generated about half the amount of post-airing engagement as the median ad. Like Novartis’, Pfizer’s Super Bowl commercial was designed to inspire viewers in the fight against cancer and tout its own bona fides in that battle, rather than pushing any specific drug.
Rounding out the night’s pharma offerings was a commercial for AbbVie’s Skyrizi: a 30-second ad called “In the Picture” that wasn’t a Super Bowl exclusive and didn’t air until about 20 minutes after the game had officially ended. According to EDO, it ranked 87th, amid several other postgame ads, with an engagement index of 7.
The Hims & Hers spot may have beat out other pharma-related Super Bowl commercials in terms of engagement, but likeability is a different story. In that respect, according to iSpot.TV, Pfizer’s ad took first place among all of the night’s commercials, regardless of category.
The “Knock You Out” ad scored 19% above the norm in its likeability. When asked to name the “single best thing” about the clip—with possible options including an ad’s music, brand, visuals or the product itself, to name a few—viewers most commonly chose the message as its strongest aspect, with 41% agreeing. Meanwhile, the top three emotions/reactions that viewers cited for Pfizer’s commercial were “corporate responsibility,” “inspiring” and “powerful,” per iSpot.
Novartis’ “Your Attention Please” was similarly well received. Viewers also identified its message as the single best thing about the commercial—with 43% of those surveyed saying so—and, in addition to recognizing its corporate responsibility, they singled out “philanthropy” as another common emotion/reaction after viewing the ad.
As for Hims & Hers’ ad, responses were quite a bit more mixed. According to iSpot, while 31% of viewers once again selected the commercial’s message as its best aspect, two of the top emotions/reactions registered were “dishonest” and “inappropriate.” Those strong reactions were further exemplified in viewers’ free-form responses, where some said they felt the ad was fat-shaming or fatphobic and others expressed wariness toward anyone promising any kind of “magic bullet” solution to obesity, per the analysts.