Beauty and sports are big businesses that have only become more connected in recent years, but the relationship has its ups and downs. The 2024 Super Bowl featured memorable ads from top beauty brands, including e.l.f., Cetaphil, CeraVe, NYX, and Dove. These brands couldn’t have picked a better year to make the $7 million investment for a 30-second advertising campaign, considering the Super Bowl drew the largest-ever female audience in 2024, with 58.8 million women tuning in. This marked a 9% increase from the previous year, surpassing the 7% growth in overall viewership. Driven in part by what experts dubbed the “Taylor Swift effect,” football saw a significant increase in popularity among both women and young people over the last couple of years, and beauty brands were eager to capitalize on the global attention that comes with securing a coveted Super Bowl ad spot.After the impressive display of ads from beauty brands at last year's Super Bowl (and with Taylor Swift’s boyfriend, Travis Kelce, back at the Super Bowl for the third year in a row with the Kansas City Chiefs), it was surprising to see that beauty brands were largely absent from the big game. Brands like e.l.f. and NYX Professional Cosmetics, which both ran their first Super Bowl ads last year, both opted to run social media campaigns instead of paying the now $8 million (up $1 million from 2024—how about that inflation rate?) for a 30-second TV spot. Dove, which also bought its first-ever Super Bowl ad last year, was the only beauty brand to run a nationally televised ad this year.