Super Bowl LVIII Advertising Trends: Temu Fumbles the Bag

Key Takeaways:

• Data from Pathmatics by Sensor Tower shows that only 332 advertisers of the ~193k tracked in the platform reached $7mn in US ad spend within a single month of the year from Jan’23-Jan’24. Analyzing a subset of 50 companies from the 300+ advertisers that reached a threshold of $7mn revealed that advertisers that spent ~$7.6mn in a month reached an average of 791.7mn impressions, nearly six times as many people as the record-breaking viewership of the Super Bowl

• In the six weeks leading up to the Super Bowl, US ad spend across all categories only increased an average of 1% WoW, though ad spend for advertisers that ran Super Bowl commercials increased an average of 6% WoW to drive excitement for the big game ad, with spend peaking the week of the Super Bowl (2/5/24-2/11/24), up 16% WoW as brands teased their commercials ahead of the big game

  • In 2023, after the initial impact of Super Bowl LVII commercials began to dissipate, the brands with Super Bowl ad spots immediately started to pull back on US ad spend, down -8% WoW (2/19/23-2/25/23)

• TurboTax was the second-highest spender across all brands within the 2024 Super Bowl commercial cohort (behind Temu), accounting for 11% of spend (1/1/24-2/14/24), outspending advertising giants like Google and Microsoft. This is due to the short-window of topicality for the brand, as TurboTax accounted for <1% of spend across the cohort of 2024 Super Bowl advertisers in 2H23

• Temu’s US ad spend doubled in the six weeks leading up to Super Bowl LVIII, however that increase in spend didn’t translate to DAU growth for the ecommerce upstart. Temu’s US DAUs actually decreased an average of -1% WoW during that same time period, a notable change from 2023 when DAUs increased an average of 10% WoW

For more information, request the full report from reports@sensortower.com.