“We’re definitely going big,” Chow said. The forthcoming showdown between the Seattle Seahawks and New England Patriots will take place in Santa Clara, on Google’s “home turf,” Chow noted (Google’s global headquarters is just down the road in Mountain View). “You’ll start to see Gemini all over. It’ll be unmissable.”
In the months leading up to Super Bowl LX, the game’s broadcast host, NBC Sports, sold 30-second spots for upward of $10 million. Though Chow declined to specify Google’s total investment, he said it was “on par” with the brand’s previous Super Bowl buys.
Google sees this moment as the start of a bigger promotional push, with Gemini occupying the pole position of CEO Sundar Pichai’s decade-long ambition to make Google an “AI-first” company (something he first spoke about in April 2016).
“At Google, we talk about [the idea that] a product has to be ready for marketing,” Chow said. “We have a lot of products, and some of them are early-stage, and they’re not quite ready for marketing. Nothing’s perfect, but we’re at that moment where the Super Bowl is the starting point” for a bigger Gemini push.
Gemini is gaining steam on AI leader OpenAI. It now has around 650 million monthly active users, compared with ChatGPT’s 800 million, according to research from European bank BNP Paribas. Gemini’s share of website visits rose to 22.5% in December, up from 17.7% the previous month. The figures far outpace the tool’s 2024 usage numbers.
In the weeks following the Super Bowl, Chow’s team will look to link the “New Home” ad and the surrounding campaign to an uptick in Gemini adoption. Google will also do lift studies and assess changes in consideration, awareness, search trends, and more.
“It is this pivotal moment, and we’re kind of kicking off this Gemini story,” Chow said. “When I look back, I would hope that this is the beginning of that moment where regular people are starting to learn about Gemini and be like, ‘Oh, that’s the helpful AI. That’s the thing that can do this for me.’ That’s where I think that cultural adoption and mindshare of Gemini starts to take off—in this starting moment.”
