Oral Wegovy, uACR test spotlighted in the health-oriented Super Bowl ads

Although Super Bowl LX’s ad lineup had plenty of the usual beer, car and tech company pitches, drug and other healthcare companies also shelled out $8 million for a 30-second spot to send their message to a TV audience of more than 100 million people.

USA Today has an “ad meter” where you can rate 42 ads that were scheduled to broadcast during the football game, which the Seattle Seahawks won handily. Veteran healthcare journalist Gary Schwitzer critiqued the ads on his HealthNewsReview substack for what he argues are their errant health messages— no consideration of the risks of overtreatment from screening, for example.

No surprise, the glucagon-like peptide 1 (GLP-1) drugs led the way among the ads that touched on healthcare. Novo Nordisk had a celebrity-studded ad for its oral form of Wegovy (semaglutide) featuring Kenan Thompson, DJ Khaled, John C. Reilly and Danielle Brooks, among others. Most of the supremely expensive Super Bowl ads run 30 seconds. The Wegovy pill is 90 seconds, partly because of the FDA-required disclaimers about side effects. The ad is a joke about people wanting to take a pill for all their problems, including difficulty parallel parking and for stretchy arms to make it easier to rescue cats. “Maybe we don’t need a pill for everything,” says Thompson. “But for managing weight, there is Wegovy, the one and only GLP-1 pill for weight loss.” The FDA approved the oral formulation of Wegovy in December 2025, and it became available last month. The agency is expected to give Eli Lilly’s oral GLP-1, orforglipron, the go-ahead in the next few months, setting off what is bound to be a pitched battle for the oral GLP-1 market share.

The other GLP-1 ad featured tennis superstar Serena Williams. The ad was for Ro, the direct-to-consumer and telehealth business that has partnered with Novo Nordisk and Lilly to sell their GLP-1s. Williams does not refer to a particular GLP-1, which explains the lack of a disclaimer about side effects. In fact, Williams’ pitch might make it seem like Ro is the drugs, not the vendor of them (which is, of course, the whole point). “I’m on Ro,” she says in the 30-second spot. “Thirty-five pounds down, on GLP-1s. Healthier on Ro. Supported on Ro.”

Hims & Hers’ 60-second “Rich people live longer” spot has some ideas, rendered into snappy ad copy, that a staid, peer-reviewed medical article on health equity might reference. “All that money doesn’t just buy more stuff. It buys more time,” says the narrator. “The wealth gap is a health gap.” The ad features unflattering images of presumably wealthy people riding in limousines and celebrating trips into space, and there is a snippet of music that references the theme music for “Succession.” The pitch is that Hims & Hers can provide the same kind of access to cancer tests and hormone treatment that privileged people have. “The same science. The same access. No connections required. Now that’s rich,” the ad concludes. GLP-1s are not mentioned, but the ad promises “weight loss treatment that can be microdosed to fit your goals.” Him & Hers has been playing dodgeball with the FDA with its marketing and selling of compounded GLP-1s. Last week it started selling a compounded version of the Wegovy pill for just $49 a month. After the FDA threatened legal action, it yanked the product off the market, and the company’s stock price slid.

It’s a safe bet that something like 99% of the game’s TV audience had never heard of the uACR (urine albumin-creatinine ratio) test until they watched the ad featuring Octavia Spencer and Sofia Vergara as motorcycle-riding crime-fighting types. The uACR test is, in effect, a measure of albumin in the urine; a high level is an indication of possible kidney disease. “Don’t miss the signal,” says the narrator of the ad. “Ask your doctor about a simple urine test called uACR and join our mission.” The ad’s sponsor, German pharma company Boehringer Ingelheim, has several kidney drugs in development. The Super Bowl ad is part of the “Detect the SOS” campaign the company is leading that includes access to at-home tests.

Although it is never named, the prostate-specific antigen (PSA) screening test for prostate cancer also got some time in the Super Bowl ad limelight. The lighthearted “Relax Your Tight End” is an extended pun featuring blissed-out current and retired NFL players who play the tight end. They are lying in hammocks, doing yoga and painting pictures. “Have you ever, in your life, seen tight ends this relaxed?” intones the narrator with an Enya New Age music track playing in the background. The digital rectal exam isn’t named, but the PSA test is heralded as a “simple, finger-free blood test.” The ad shows the backends (clothed) of several men clenched and then relaxed. The sponsor of the cheeky ad is Novartis, the Swiss pharmaceutical company. When the FDA added a new indication last year to its radioligand treatment for prostate cancer, Pluvicto (lutetium Lu 177 vipivotide tetraxetan), Novartis said in a news release that the change tripled the number of patients for whom Pluvicto.

Would a Super Bowl broadcast be recognizable without ads for processed food (although they are never called that)? The “Pringeleo” ad for Pringles featuring Sabrina Carpenter seems destined for a top spot in the LX game best-ad rankings. John Hamm, Bowen Yang and Scarlett Johansson were in the (only mildly amusing) ad for Ritz crackers. The irony of the processed food ads vying for attention with the ones for GLP-1s is plainly there but not as on-the-nose as the MAHA ad featuring the former boxer Mike Tyson and its plug for realfood.gov, the website established by HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to promote the new Dietary Guidelines for Americans, 2025-2030. Tyson talks about his sister dying at age 25 from obesity (he says she died from a heart attack). “We are the most powerful country in the world. We have the most obese, fudgy people. Something has to be done about processed food in this country,” says Tyson before he and his son bite loudly into crunchy apples.