Buying a 30-second spot on the Super Bowl to advertise a website platform seems anachronistic. It reminds us of the dot-com boom days, when GoDaddy’s slightly inappropriate ads garnered outsize attention. But web-hosting company Squarespace did spring for a Super Bowl ad this year, and they made the most of their 30 seconds.
Squarespace’s 2025 Super Bowl Ad
The ad, starring actor Barry Keoghan, is set in rural Ireland. The scene is immediately reminiscent of The Banshees of Inisherin, an award-winning film in which Keoghan played an important supporting role. At first glance, this might seem an odd choice. The remote countryside inhabitants hardly seem in need of websites, and Banshees wasn’t a feel-good movie.
Keoghan rides a donkey – thankfully, in good health – through the village, flinging laptops at mystified inhabitants. A woman using a scrubbing board in a metal tub receives one displaying a website for “Natural Dye Workshops.” Another laptop thrown through a pub window shows a home page for “Daly’s Bar.” Other confused recipients are a blacksmith and shepherd.
Presumably, by showing these improbable website beneficiaries Squarespace is convincing solopreneurs and would-be startups that anyone can have a website, even if they have zero technical knowledge.
The tagline at the end is, “A website makes it real.” Without a website, they imply, you don’t really have a business.
Why Squarespace’s Super Bowl Ad is Effective
It’s all too common for Super Bowl ads to tell an engaging story and then, in the last second or two, reveal the brand. Sometimes, the brand is shown only on the screen and isn’t even in the audio track. These are the kind of ads where the consumer remembers the story or the joke, but can’t remember which beer brand, delivery service, or insurance company sponsored it.
Squarespace doesn’t make that mistake.
As Keoghan rides through the town flinging laptops, he’s also yelling, “Squarespace!” I count nine repetitions of the brand name in the 30-second audio track. The last one echoes off the shoreline cliffs as the Squarespace logo appears on the screen.
A few brands are so identifiable that they don’t need to emphasize the brand. If you see Clydesdales pulling a cart full of beer kegs, you know it’s a Budweiser ad. Most brands, though, don’t have that luxury.
Remembering the Brand, Not the Gag
For viewers who watch with the sound on, which will be most of them during the Super Bowl, brand recall will be unusually high for Squarespace compared to other ads.
A case in point: Matthew McConaughey appears in two hilarious ads, one for Uber Eats and the other for Salesforce. For those ads, the story is far more memorable than the barely-mentioned brands.
$8 million is a lot to spend for 30 seconds of Super Bowl exposure, but Squarespace makes the most of their time.