• by Megan Boveri , January 22, 2025

If you’re a D2C brand with limited marketing dollars, investing in the Super Bowl may seem like a “Hail Mary” pass, but for brands looking to build both brand and performance, it’s a total touchdown. There’s a reason large multinational companies come back year after year.

While this year’s game is sold out, now is the time to start planning for next year’s big game. Here are three ways that D2C brands can drive both efficient and effective performance by advertising in the Super Bowl.

Balance brand awareness and performance media through year-long media match. Nothing builds awareness of your brand like being in the big game. D2C brands can track the impact by website visits immediately.

But the Super Bowl media commitment is not just about the game itself. There is typically a match requirement allocated across the rest of the year within the broader network of properties.

This is where D2C brands can leverage the premium placement and brand building prowess of the Super Bowl with more efficient, performance-oriented supporting media designed to drive performance outcomes on both TV and digital channels and deliver lower costs per website visit.

Invigorate your brand and fill the funnel with new prospects. Performance marketing tactics typically focus on converting audiences who are the lowest hanging fruit and have generated signals that they are close to conversion.

This is effective and efficient in the short term, but if you are not generating demand through brand building tactics that help fill the top of the funnel, eventually you will hit a point of diminished return because you will run out of prospects that will ultimately convert. 

Once this happens, performance marketers will often see brand erosion begin, and the audiences who have seen your ads at high frequencies without taking action will begin to view your brand in a more negative light.

The Super Bowl gives these brands the opportunity to reach large numbers of prospects and generate new audiences all with a frequency of one.

Activate social channels. Taking your game to the social playing field will enable you to extract as much value as possible from your Super Bowl investment. It’s an opportunity to advance your story, bring your characters to life in a new way, build excitement through teasers and push a more viral response from your audience.

Tapping into social trends can let you capitalize on the attention of the Super Bowl on all channels and fuel both your brand awareness and results.

While the investment might not be right or attainable for all brands in the D2C sector, setting a vision for a big moment can galvanize your marketing approach. The Super Bowl can deliver real impact and efficiency for D2C brands when done with care and creativity.