At $167,000 per second to advertise during the Super Bowl ($5 million for 30 seconds), it has become a cultural phenomenon. People who don't like football will go to a Super Bowl party and they will tell you, "the ads are my favorite part."
It has become the ultimate way for advertisers to do in what evolutionary psychology calls "costly signaling," because people know it costs so much to do it, it actually gives their brands more prestige than any other place to advertise. Basically, each company is signaling to the consumer saying "our compay is so amazing we can afford to spend $5 million dollars on 30 seconds to make you laugh, cry or think".
To understand how this works, the classic example is the peacock feather. It is biologically very costly to produce the 200 lavish peacock feathers it takes to turn on a peahen. The peacock feather advertises, "I am so healthy and strong, I can grow hundreds of feathers that make it harder to evade predators and I have extra resources to waste growning these extravagant feathers," and it all to impress mates.
Basically all these Super Bowl advertisers are trying to mate with your wallet and they are doing it by saying to consumers "our company is so incredible we have $5 million dollars to throw at the opportunity to have 30 seconds of your attention to entertain you with". The secret of it all is because people know just how costly those precious 30 seconds is, it gives automatic credibility and apprciation for whatever company can elicit an emotional reaction from the audience for brief moment in time.