This weekend, the rewards app Fetch is debuting its very first Super Bowl ad, which includes a live giveaway of $1.2 million. Super Bowl spots cost roughly $8 million now – what’s one more mil, right?
Fetch, née Fetch Rewards, gives shoppers points for uploading pictures of their receipts, which users can exchange for rewards or discounts from a range of retailers such as Amazon and Walmart. To spread the word about the app, Fetch CEO Wes Schroll will livestream a giveaway of $10,000 to 120 winners, or one winner per second during the last two minutes of the Big Game on Sunday.
The only eligibility requirement is having the Fetch app. The ad will include a QR code viewers can scan to download the app onto their phones.
This Super Bowl debut is an awareness play designed to introduce Fetch both to everyday consumers as well as retailers and other brands, which can tap Fetch for help driving customer acquisition and sales, CMO Birk Cooper tells me.
Fetch especially wants to raise brand awareness to make its performance marketing efforts work better, Cooper said. People are generally more likely to download a suggested app if they’ve heard of it before. And the more active users Fetch has, the more purchase data it can offer to the advertisers it’s courting.
Fetching new users
When Fetch first came to be, most of its users were primary decision-makers for household purchases. In other words, its user base skewed both female and older.
While Fetch’s user base still skews slightly female, Cooper said, it is getting younger. (Case in point: AdExchanger’s resident Gen Z, yours truly, became a Fetch user a few months ago after being referred by a friend’s mom.) “Our [fastest] growing demographic is Gen Z,” Cooper said, which is ”why we think the Super Bowl is such a great spot for us.”
Gen Z is a hot target right now among marketers, who are increasingly turning to live sports, including the Super Bowl, to win the attention and affections of the younger generation.
“We do think there will be direct response” during Fetch’s live giveaway, including among Gen Z, Cooper said. He noted Fetch expects to see more than 1 million app downloads as a result of Sunday’s campaign. For reference, Fetch currently has 12 million monthly active users.
The hope is that a sizable chunk of new users who download Fetch during the giveaway will stick around and become regular users, too.
Fetch has been taking steps to increase engagement on its app, Cooper said, such as introducing mobile gaming. Fetch also recently stopped allowing users to scan receipts that are more than 14 days old (can confirm!), requiring users to upload receipts frequently to get their points.
From an advertiser perspective, enforcing a time limit on uploads also ensures purchase data is recent enough for brands to consider it reliable. A receipt from yesterday is much more valuable to a marketer than a two-year-old receipt crumpled at the bottom of a forgotten bag or purse. Up-to-date purchase data is quintessential, Cooper said, because marketers and retailers can use it to effectively personalize offers on the app.
Ultimately, he said, adding in a layer of brand awareness should help Fetch collect more purchase data that marketers can use to drive more sales.
In the meantime, I’ll be keeping my fingers crossed in hopes that I become $10,000 richer this weekend.
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