GLAAD’S VISIBILITY PROJECT FOUND ONLY 9 ADS FEATURING LGBTQ PEOPLE DURING SUPER BOWL LIX BROADCAST

BRANDS LARGELY MISS OPPORTUNITY TO CAPTURE CONSUMERS; TRANSGENDER PEOPLE LEFT OUT ENTIRELY FOR SECOND CONSECUTIVE YEAR 

ONLY SUPERBOWL ADVERT WITH EXPLICIT LGBTQ REPRESENTATION HAS TIES TO ANTI-LGBTQ GROUPS

Super Bowl LIX’s pre-show performance featured a tribute to the victims of the 2025 New Orleans truck attack, performed by bisexual artist and longtime LGBTQ advocate Lady Gaga

New York, New York – Monday, February 10, 2025 – GLAAD, the world’s largest lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) media advocacy organization, today announced the GLAAD Visibility Project’s findings of quality and quantity of  LGBTQ storytelling in ads which aired during Super Bowl LIX on Sunday, February 9, and signaled to brands, corporations and advertising agencies why including the LGBTQ community in cultural moments such as the Super Bowl is so crucial.

In 2021, GLAAD launched the Visibility Project, a campaign in partnership with P&G to drive and to sustain LGBTQ inclusion in advertising and marketing. Per GLAAD’s inaugural Advertising Visibility Index, brands continue to miss opportunities to capture consumers by relying on LGBTQ celebrities as spokespeople without additional storytelling.

GLAAD tracked a decrease in advertising representation from 2024 to 2025 (10 ads to 9 ads), and increased LGBTQ visibility in the telecast with a tribute to the victims of the 2025 New Orleans truck attack, performed by bisexual artist and longtime LGBTQ advocate Lady Gaga.

“The data shows time and time again that featuring LGBTQ people in ads is important – as agreed upon by industry executives and the general public,” said GLAAD President and CEO Sarah Kate Ellis. “While diversity decreased across this year’s Super Bowl ads, companies that want to attract new consumers and employees will learn that inclusion in advertising and public communications will accelerate long-term business success.”

While GLAAD’s research on representation in advertising has historically found LGBTQ people underrepresented, GLAAD’s 2024 Visibility Perceptions in Advertising study released in November revealed that an overwhelming majority of decision-makers and executives in the advertising industry want to include LGBTQ communities in their adverts and campaigns. The study found that 90% of the industry says it’s very important to feature the LGBTQ community in advertising. Despite this understanding, most LGBTQ inclusion in Super Bowl advertising requires consumers to recognize LGBTQ celebrities rather than LGBTQ community scenes or storytelling.

GLAAD’s Visibility Project, launched in 2021 with P&G to grow LGBTQ inclusion in advertising, tracked ads that aired during Super Bowl LIX. This year, 9 ads from Häagen-Dazs, He Gets Us, Homes.com, MSC Cruises, Nike, Novartis, Poppi, and Ritz explicitly featured LGBTQ people.

These 9 LGBTQ-inclusive ads can be found below:

• Häagen-Dazs, Not So Fast, Not So Furious, featuring Michelle Rodriguez
• He Gets Us, What Is Greatness, featuring an LGBTQ Pride parade
• com, Not Saying We’re the Best, featuring Dan Levy
• com, Still Not Saying We’re the Best, featuring Dan Levy
• MSC Cruises, Let’s Holiday on MSC Cruises, featuring Drew Barrymore
• Nike, So Win., featuring Sha’Carri Richardson with voiceover from DOECHII
• Novartis, Your Attention, Please, featuring Wanda Sykes
• Poppi, Soda Thoughts, featuring Jake Shane
• Ritz, Salty Club, featuring Aubrey Plaza

The only ad to feature LGBTQ iconography and not an out LGBTQ celebrity was He Gets Us with a snapshot of an LGBTQ Pride Parade. However, GLAAD notes that this campaign is formerly funded by The Servant Foundation, a non-profit organization and funding source for The Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF). The ADF is listed as an anti-LGBTQ hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, and has a history of funding and representing cases targeting LGBTQ people, youth and protections, detailed by GLAAD’s Accountability Project.

He Gets Us recently transferred ownership to Come Near, a new nonprofit organization with close ties to ADF or its funders, as reflected by Come Near’s CEO and three-man board of directors. Come Near’s board is composed of Mart Green, founder of the Illuminations Foundation, which is behind tens of millions of dollars worth of funding to the National Christian Charitable Foundation, a significant ADF funder; Marwan Rifka, the executive pastor of a conservative megachurch which describes transgender people and exploration of gender identity as “cultural evil”; and Bob Hopkins, founder of evangelical ministry OneHope. One parental resource on gender identity from OneHope denies the existence of nonbinary people (“God only created two Genders”), and encourages parents to “pray and seek wisdom” before using a child’s preferred pronouns.

“Multiple studies have found consumers not only want to see LGBTQ people included in the media, but they expect and believe businesses and brands are responsible for fighting for our rights,” said Meghan Bartley, GLAAD Senior Director of Agencies, Brands, and Engagement. “Advertising visibility is only one piece of the equation. When the only explicit example of LGBTQ inclusion in Super Bowl ads comes from a brand that has ties to anti-LGBTQ organizations and activists, it is clear the industry is missing the mark and the opportunity.”

Last year, GLAAD’s Visibility Project tracked 10 LGBTQ-inclusive ads, but the representation was driven mainly by celebrities and not explicit LGBTQ storytelling, with zero trans representation. One exception was a Volkswagen ad, which featured a wedding of two women. In 2022 and 2023, GLAAD’s Visibility Project found that LGBTQ inclusion in Super Bowl ads was nearly invisible, with only four ads for both Super Bowl LVI and LVII that featured LGBTQ people. The past four years have yet to beat the representation seen in 2020, with at least eleven LGBTQ-inclusive ads from Amazon Alexa, Budweiser, Doritos, HGTV, Microsoft, Olay, Pop Tarts, Sabra, Tide, TurboTax, and Under Armour that aired during Super Bowl LIV.

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In 2021, GLAAD launched the Visibility Project, a campaign in partnership with P&G to drive and to sustain LGBTQ inclusion in ads and marketing. Despite the fact that 1 in 6 Generation Z adults identify as part of the LGBTQ community, a 2021 study by the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media found only 2% of characters in ads from the annual Cannes Lions festival were LGBTQ. With the Visibility Project, P&G and GLAAD are bringing together the world’s top brands and ad agencies working to advance LGBTQ inclusion in ads, creating and providing tools, techniques and resources for industry executives, and harnessing the power of advertising to accelerate LGBTQ acceptance.

GLAAD’s research showcases both positive audience reception to LGBTQ inclusion in ads, as well as a growing willingness from brands to include LGBTQ people in ads. In conjunction with the launch of the Visibility Project, GLAAD & P&G released findings from “LGBTQ Inclusion in Advertising and Media, Advertiser and Agency Perspectives” Study, which showed that marketing and ad executives are more concerned about the risks of inauthentic representation and response from the LGBTQ community than with a public backlash for including LGBTQ people. Read the full study here.

In May 2020, GLAAD released the findings from its first study with P&G called the “LGBTQ Inclusion in Advertising and Media” study. The study details how non-LGBTQ Americans respond to TV, films, and ads featuring LGBTQ representation. Results demonstrated high comfortability around viewing LGBTQ images in the media, favorability towards brands with LGBTQ-inclusive advertising, and that inclusive media images lead to greater acceptance and understanding. Read the full study here.

GLAAD and Kantar released the inaugural Advertising Visibility Index in June 2023 at Cannes Lions. It found only 3% of the 2022 ads on national linear television from the top ten largest advertisers included LGBTQ people. Over 70% of the inclusive ads featured LGBTQ celebrities and only 1.42% of screen time was spent featuring LGBTQ people. The Index included a Kantar and GLAAD survey of U.S. consumers that showed use of known LGBTQ celebrities as the least important factor to consumers behind other factors including displays of empathy and humanity, and realistic stories. Consumers also had difficulty recognizing the 2023 Super Bowl ads that included LGBTQ celebrities as inclusive.