Stretching the Budget: Inside the Ad Strategies of Top Athleisure Wear Brands

Technology has fundamentally transformed the way we work out. Americans now use smart watches to track their steps and heart rates, mirrors that bring the gym experience home, and AI coaches to boost morale. However even in the face of such futuristic advancements, the need for high-quality workout clothing remains. This article analyzes the top five athletic apparel brands in the United States, diving into how their budget allocation, impression generation, and platform performance differs — and what this all means for the industry as a whole. 

The following brands were selected based on their digital advertising spend from April 2024 to April 2025:

#1. Fabletics: With the biggest budget and most aggressive presence across platforms, Fabletics is all about visibility—often using celebrities (like Khloe Kardashian) and value-driven messaging to dominate the space.

#2. Lululemon: Recognized for its premium price point and lifestyle appeal, Lululemon leans into polished, high-production content on platforms like TikTok and YouTube to reinforce its image as the go-to for upscale, aspirational fitness. Think green juice and a sandwich from Erewhon.

#3. Vuori: Famous for its “technical,” breathable textiles, Vuori’s rise has dovetailed nicely with the loosening of dress codes post-Covid — you might find a tech bro sporting their pants in the office. This brand focuses on soft, lifestyle visuals and favors longform video creatives.

#4. Gymshark: Doubling down on viral content, Gymshark has cemented itself as a leader in influencer marketing, even creating a viral hashtag and corresponding fitness challenge that gained over 700k views on TikTok. The brand has been around for just over a decade, and is currently valued at over a billion dollars.

#5. New Balance: Founded in 1906, New Balance’s origins lie in orthopedic footwear. Today, the brand is a household name that holds its own amidst flashier newcomers. It bet big on traditional platforms, and spent strategically with a smaller budget.

Ad Spend Breakdown: Smart Plays, Wasted Dollars, and Channel Surprises

Luckily for Mark Zuckerberg, none of the brands studied skipped-out on Meta platforms — Facebook and Instagram were universal touchpoints, which also proved to be efficient investments for most. Each company received a similar share of their overall impressions from Facebook (median = 29%), demonstrating its value in broad targeting. More importantly, those impressions outpaced spend for Lululemon, Vuori, and Gymshark. These brands got a bang for their buck on the broadly-used social media network. 

While Fabletics outspent everyone (by a lot) and generated more than 50% of the cohort’s total impressions, narrow, focused spend allowed competitors with smaller checkbooks to eke out crucial victories. New Balance, for instance, saw the highest returns on Instagram even with the lowest investment, as percentage share of impressions led its percentage share of spend on the platform by eight points. The staple brand enjoyed further wins on Snapchat, to which it allocated 13% of its spend in return for nearly a third of impressions. Conversely, Lululemon was the second-highest spender overall, but its impressions didn’t scale quite as effectively (17% of the cohort’s spend compared to 15% of impressions). 

Initial observations paint OTT in particular as a less impactful channel for athleisure brands. New Balance and Vuori both saw lower impression yield per dollar on the streaming platforms, with impressions underperforming by 30 and 19 points, respectively. Big bets led to small returns, suggesting competitors might want to avoid these channels for the time being — or develop a more effective creative strategy. 

Media Mix: Distribution Plans Reflect Priorities

While spend to impression ratios give us insight into the relative efficacy of each platform, deconstructing each brand’s major focus area allows us to discern more about their individual brand personality and priorities. Perhaps unsurprisingly, industry magnate Fabletics was omnipresent: it utilized every major platform. The creator-first Gymshark, on the other hand, leaned heavily into Youtube (29% of its budget) and Pinterest (6%), allocating a higher portion of its spend to these platforms than its peers. 

The lofty and aesthetics-driven Lululemon had the most TikTok-heavy strategy (10%) while Vuori and New Balance doubled down on OTT…which, as we saw earlier, didn’t work out too well. New Balance, at least, was able to recover some of that investment with its successful efforts on Snapchat. Platform strategy acts as a rough sketch of brand identity —whether it’s broad-reaching and bold (Fabletics), niche yet impactful (Gymshark), or old-fashioned with a twist (New Balance). 

Creative Messaging and Breakout Campaigns

The athleisure brands were also forced to make tough decisions about which creatives to put the most money behind. The most expensive ad (in terms of spend) was from Fabletics, and featured Khloe Kardashian’s line of swimwear. Spend on the creative peaked in June and was funneled mainly towards Facebook, where its simple caption (“✅ Adds to cart”) appeared to be geared towards younger, digitally-savvy audiences. 

Vuori took second place, with its 30-second video ad featuring a svelte blonde doing cartwheels, stretching and jogging on the beach. Ad spend was funneled primarily towards OTT streaming channels including Paramount and Hulu, and spend peaked in February (perhaps to catch people while their New Year’s resolutions were still intact). The ad with the most impressions, however, was for Fabletics Men, suggesting high engagement potential among this vertical. 

Healthy competition was visible in the top creatives as well, with one of Fabletics’ highest-performing Instagram ads featuring the line “Material is so close to Lululemon and the quality is amazing” — alongside a caption urging viewers to “stop overpaying for activewear.” 

In the race to capture audience attention, it seems a little ribbing of the opponent can be a successful strategy for drawing in more eyeballs. 

Ad Spend Breakdown & Performance Insights: 3 Key Takeaways

• Budget size doesn’t always equal best results: Fabletics dominated in spend, but smaller brands saw big returns through platform efficiency.

• Platform choice echoes brand identity: From creator-first (Gymshark) to traditionalist-with-a-twist (New Balance), each brand’s ad strategy reflected its unique positioning.

• OTT might be overhyped: Despite polished creatives, streaming platforms struggled to deliver the ROI seen on social channels like Instagram and Snapchat.

Want to dive deeper into the trends shaping the fitness industry? Check out State of Mobile 2025, where we unpack the vertical’s post-pandemic performance rebound — and what it means for brands.