A 15-second ad for Tubi that aired during the Super Bowl shocked viewers.
Tubi/YouTubeOne of the most talked-about commercials from this year's Super Bowl looked like a glitch at first — one that had viewers nationwide yelling at their screens and clamoring for their remotes.
The 15-second ad appeared to show up at the end of a commercial break as Fox Sports commentators Kevin Burkhardt and Greg Olsen came into view. Then, the screen abruptly shifted to display the interface for San Francisco-based streaming service Tubi, scrolling through a few recommended options for movies and infuriating many as it seemingly disrupted the big game.
“No, you didn't sit on the remote,” the tech company wrote in a description of the commercial shared on YouTube shortly after it aired. “But on Super Bowl Sunday, we fooled audiences into thinking they did.”
Tubi is known for its vast selection of free-to-stream TV shows and movies, which is great if you can stomach the flurry of ads that come with it.
Its surprise ad spawned countless memes and temporarily tore families apart as they tried to figure out what was going on. As comedian and actor Wanda Sykes put it: “Tubi just got folks punched and tv remotes thrown.”
It wasn’t the first commercial Tubi aired that evening. An earlier spot, also aired in the fourth quarter, showed a fleet of human-sized rabbits yanking people from their office desks, cars and local libraries before pushing them into a massive pit filled with movie screens.
“Find rabbit holes you didn’t know you were looking for,” the commercial’s tagline read.
But it was the surprise ad that came later that got viewers’ attention, calling to mind Coinbase’s peculiar QR code commercial from 2022. Greg Hahn, the co-founder and CCO at Mischief, the ad agency that partnered with Tubi for the commercial, told Adweek they only received approval for it at the last minute.
It was perhaps the only commercial of the night to generate a widespread visceral response. “Tubi should be sued for this,” wrote one Twitter user.