Did Super Bowl ads cause tech glitches for their advertisers?

During the Super Bowl this weekend, Salesforce and YouTuber MrBeast teamed up in an advertisement offering viewers a $1 million prize. All people had to do was sign up online and be the first to crack the clues hidden in the ad and complete a treasure hunt on the accompanying website. People were so into it, though, that the system glitched.

Many participants faced delays in receiving their registration emails, a technological issue that Salesforce attributed to an “overwhelming response.” Despite the issue, Salesforce is still calling the ad a win because it generated so much interest. CEO Marc Benioff posted on X that 53 million people visited the campaign’s landing page, which was “beyond any expectation we could have had.”

Kris Marszalek had a similar reaction when traffic overwhelmed his site AI.com after its fourth-quarter ad. Social media users reported that the site was down following the advertisement that encouraged users to visit the platform and create their own handle and agent. “Insane traffic levels. We prepared for scale, but not for THIS,” Marszalek said on X alongside three fire emojis.