Robinhood's very bad Super Bowl ad made some people real mad
Robinhood's Super Bowl ad couldn't have come at a worse time. They're in the midst of a ton of bad press and ran and ad that felt it was made to make people even angrier.
In case you missed the wild saga: Robinhood came under fire after it limited the trades on stocks that Reddit investors targeted to inflate, like AMC and GameStop. This was part of a widespread battle between retail traders and certain hedge funds that had shorted stocks. Robinhood claims they didn't have enough cash to continue trading, making the pricey ad even more controversial.
From the get go, newly popular subreddit r/WallStreetBets was pissed off when Robinhood announced, and debuted, its planned Super Bowl ad. "Fuck Robinhood," posted one commenter as the subreddit floated crowdfunding an (uber expensive) ad of its own. WallStreetBets ended up raising about $30,000 — that's many millions away from from buying a Super Bowl ad — but the contentious atmosphere didn't go away.
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To be fair, the ad from Robinhood almost seemed designed to make people angry. The message of the ad is literally "we are all investors" just after it made headlines for denying people the chance to invest. Here's the Robinhood spot that aired toward the end of the big game.
People were really, really unhappy to the ad from Robinhood. Here are just a few of the responses, which ranged from anger, to jokes, to disbelief that the app would run the ad.
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Ad Age tweeted that Robinhood apparently considered pulling the ad but decided to run it after seeing its users increase during the controversy.
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Well it definitely sparked a response, for better or worse.
Topics Super Bowl
Tim Marcin is an Associate Editor on the culture team at Mashable, where he mostly digs into the weird parts of the internet. You'll also see some coverage of memes, tech, sports, trends, and the occasional hot take. You can find him on Bluesky (sometimes), Instagram (infrequently), or eating Buffalo wings (as often as possible).
