Hasta La Creative!

The social network has disclosed an estimate for years, but a closer look raises lots of questions.

Michael C. Hall, Will Eno and Sarah Benson team up for an unlikely, but very real production of “Skittles Commercial: The Broadway Musical.”

Procter & Gamble’s Charmin isn’t actually slated to appear in the Super Bowl (as far as we know), but that didn’t stop “Saturday Night Live” from imagining how a focus group session for a Big Game ad for the toilet paper brand might have gone. In the segment above, which appeared as a part of the weekend’s episode of “SNL,” we join the discussion just after the ad (which we don’t actually get to see) has been played on a monitor for a group of average consumers. The focus group moderator (Aidy Bryant) makes it clear the planned Super Bowl ad will be part of Charmin’s continuing campaign starring a family of cartoon bears, and she does an admirable job of trying to keep the conversation on trackto no avail.

As happens in every focus group ever, the participants keep trying to suggest alternatives. “We aren’t looking for new commercial pitches,” the moderator explains, “just your thoughts on the commercial you just saw.” A hyper-woke, uber-PC woman (Kate McKinnon) arguably comes closest to following those instructions, but a middle-aged dude in a hoodie and leather jacket (portrayed by guest host James McAvoy with a flat Philly accent) can’t help but keep suggesting elaborate new scenarios for the Charmin bearsincluding a sex scene in which one of the male bears “has no idea that his lady’s just deuced it, because the booty is clean!” Which, come to think of it, is not that far off from the narrative of an actual Charmin commercial (minus the sex).

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Hulu is returning to the Super Bowl for the third year in a row with a 30-second spot. Details about the advertisement are still under wraps. The streaming service previously returned to the Super Bowl in 2017 after a five-year hiatus to run its first advertisement for an original series, The Handmaid’s Tale. That ad…

Airing after the Super Bowl is one of the best time slots on TV: whichever show gets the coveted position is guaranteed to draw one of the largest entertainment audiences of the year. This year, CBS is using Super Bowl LIII to premiere The World’s Best, its new reality competition series hosted by James Corden…

Facebook has shut the iOS version of a Facebook app that had allowed the social media giant to spy on young mobile phone users in exchange for cash–but the company will continue to pay young people who use Android devices in exchange for their detailed mobile phone and web browsing activity. The decision comes after…

M&M’s is back in the Super Bowl with a commercial featuring bickering candies that may remind some viewers of their own kids.

The brand’s “Bad Passengers” spot shows Christina Applegate driving home from the grocery store. The arguing coming from the backseat (“he started it,” “stop touching me”) sounds like the stuff of children, albeit with deeper voices.

“Ok, do I have to break you guys apart?” Applegate asks as she grows increasingly frustrated, later bellowing, “If you don’t stop I will eat all of you alive right now!”

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Amazon recruits celebrities to test Alexa technologies — but not all of them make the cut in its Super Bowl ad.

In the 90-second commercial released on Wednesday, Alexa is shown embedded in a microwave. “We are putting her in a lot of stuff now,” an employee says. “But trust me, there are a lot of fails.”

Those “failures” include putting Alexa into Forest Whitaker’s electric toothbrush; the collar of Harrison Ford’s dog; and the hot tub of Ilana Glazer and Abbi Jacobson. Then there was the “incident,” where Alexa turned off the power of the entire Earth.

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Accompanying the spot is a comedic short in which Elba, between takes of the commercial shoot, builds a website for his fashion line 2HR Set with the help of his executive assistant, played by British comedian Lolly Adefope. As a snarky foil, she may be the campaign’s breakout star as she takes the piss out of Elba’s superstardom–“He’s so muscular!” she raves about one of his unnamed co-stars. When the actor says he wants to address his fans on the site, she pipes back, “I sort of think of a fan as someone who loves your work.” The campaign, like last year’s Super Bowl work, was created in-house.

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