What’s more illustrative of American capitalism than that day-after water cooler chat about the advertisements we saw during the Super Bowl? From food delivery apps to phones that were shockingly not made by Apple, tech companies commanded our attention last night, forcing us to explain to our friends that NFTs aren’t the same thing as cryptocurrency.
On scales of cringe and effectiveness, here are the Super Bowl’s best (and worst) tech ads.
Coinbase
[embedded content]
A QR code bounced around the black screen like a DVD screensaver, cycling through bright colors while a generic techno song played.
I pulled out my phone to scan the QR code, because why not — my friend yelled from across the room, “Don’t do it! It could be a virus! Or worse, crypto!”
Sure enough, the QR code opened the Coinbase website on my phone, offering $15 in free Bitcoin for new users with no purchase necessary. According Coinbase Chief Product Officer Surojit Chatterjee, the ad was so popular that Coinbase experienced more traffic than it’ …
