THE AD: Anthropic’s Super Bowl debut, “A Time and a Place,” pushes back against the inclusion of ads in AI chatbots. Four ads depict common reasons people turn to Claude—to ask questions about their health, relationships, or work—and show an intimate moment interrupted by a sponsored response from a fictional ad-supported chatbot, represented by a human actor. The results are intentionally jarring.
MY TAKE: Anthropic’s message is admittedly timely. Rival OpenAI is preparing to roll out beta ads on ChatGPT, with upfront commitments starting at $200,000. Founder Sam Altman’s once-hardline stance against advertising has noticeably softened. Against that backdrop, Anthropic’s campaign feels less like marketing and more like a moral flex.
The ads also clearly convey the awkwardness of a sponsored answer popping up in the middle of a deeply personal AI query. And they mirror a behavior already circulating across social feeds as memes. The campaign is both realistic and uncomfortable—which means it’s likely to grab viewers’ attention.
In fact, it’s already done so. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman posted a manifesto on X calling the ads “deceptive” and “doublespeak,” criticizing the company’s lack of lower-tier access. “Anthropic serves an expensive product to rich people,” he wrote.
OpenAI CMO Kate Rouch also said on X: “Real betrayal isn’t ads. It’s control.” She added: “Anthropic thinks powerful AI should be tightly controlled in small rooms in San Francisco and Davos.”
Competitive and trolling aside, the irony isn’t lost on me that Anthropic is arguing against ads while spending millions on the most ad-saturated platform in existence. And people who follow the AI space closely know it’s doing so at a time when the gap between AI investment and revenue continues to widen. So how realistic is its ad-free pledge?
While Anthropic’s ad made a bold statement, it also sets a trap. The real test won’t be whether the ad resonated creatively, but whether Anthropic can actually remain ad-free as monetization pressure mounts. Plenty of companies have promised “no ads” before (looking at you, Netflix).
Watch Anthropic’s Super Bowl 60 ad, “A Time and a Place,” below.
