Press Release

Tinuiti Drives Full-Funnel Brand and Performance Growth with Largest-Ever Client Cohort at the Super Bowl and 2026 Winter Olympics

NEW YORK, NY – March 24 2026 – Tinuiti, the largest independent full-funnel marketing agency in the U.S., brought its largest-ever cohort of clients to the Big Game this year, including e.l.f. Beauty, eos, Instacart, and Liquid I.V.. Powered by its proprietary Bliss Point by Tinuiti technology, these brands moved beyond purely upper-funnel awareness plays to align brand building with measurable performance, driving both immediate awareness and sustained growth.

In 2026, the Super Bowl strategy evolved from a single-night spike into a multi-week cultural and commercial growth platform. Increasingly, brands extended their presence into the 2026 Winter Olympics—transforming two global tentpole moments into sustained, full-funnel impact.

The Super Bowl is no longer just a broadcast moment; it’s a massive engine for cultural resonance that requires a strategic multi-platform architecture. We help brands move beyond the 30-second spot to secure the right inventory and extensions, ensuring that record-breaking viewership translates into sustained, measurable business outcomes.

Shasta Cafarelli, SVP Media Investment, Tinuitishasta-cafarelli_headshot

Super Bowl LX became the second most-watched program in U.S. history, averaging 124.9 million viewers across NBC, Peacock, and Telemundo, with a record-breaking peak of 137.8 million viewers during the second quarter. The cultural momentum extended well beyond the field. Bad Bunny’s halftime performance generated more than 4 billion social media views, while Telemundo reached a historic 4.8 million peak viewers—reinforcing the power of cross-cultural “surround sound.”

A New Era of “Big Game” Strategy

For Tinuiti’s 2026 roster, the Super Bowl served as a strategic anchor designed to connect brand storytelling with performance outcomes across the funnel. Through platform-native creative, regional precision, second-screen engagement, and Olympic extensions, Tinuiti clients sustained measurable momentum long after the final whistle.

Instacart: Returning for its second consecutive year, Instacart approached Super Bowl LX as a catalyst within a broader, sustained media strategy. The company secured Super Bowl and Milan–Cortina Winter Olympics spots early as foundational tentpoles, surrounded by NFL Playoffs, post-game programming, sports, and entertainment moments to create season-long continuity. Instacart orchestrated media across linear TV, OTT, audio, paid social, YouTube, display, OLV, print, and OOH—pairing upper-funnel brand storytelling with lower-funnel product messaging across consumer touchpoints. The result was a fully integrated campaign designed to guide consumers from awareness to action—demonstrating that brand and performance are most powerful when intentionally built to work together.

To show up at the Super Bowl, you have to create something truly entertaining to break through. Our hope for ‘Bananas’ was to make people laugh and spark curiosity, opening the door for further engagement. We intentionally built a broader, full-funnel strategy around the spot so that as consumers moved from the Big Game to streaming, social, and into the app, we could continue the story and bring them closer to the product experience, highlighting the care we put into selecting the highest quality groceries. Partnering with Tinuiti helped us execute that vision at scale, connecting creativity and performance to drive results.

Laura Jones, CMO, Instacart

e.l.f. Beauty: In its fourth year at the Super Bowl, e.l.f. once again challenged convention. Its “e.l.f.enovela” ‘Melisa’ starring Melissa McCarthy leveraged media to drive conversation. Focused on deepening engagement within the Latin and Hispanic community, e.l.f. ‘s culturally fluent “game time ready” activation drew inspiration from highly engaged conversation around the halftime show, embracing the idea of learning Spanish with an e.l.f. twist, introduces an unlikely savior – e.l.f.’s Glow Reviver Lip Oil. The campaign connects with audiences across an eight-week flight spanning the Olympics, social media, and major streaming platforms.

We were inspired to join the cultural conversation during this year’s Big Game halftime performance and draw from the success of our telenovela style series “Descubre e.l.f.ecto” by creating Melisa. From there, Tinuiti enabled us to move at the speed of culture while driving real performance.

Regine Fung, AVP, Global Media, e.l.f. Beauty

Liquid I.V.: Making its official Super Bowl debut, Liquid I.V. launched a national initiative aimed at addressing chronic dehydration. The campaign followed a three-phase approach—Tease, Launch, and Sustain—including its first-ever Big Game spot and the establishment of February 9th as “National Rehydration Day.”

For our Super Bowl debut, we didn’t treat the Big Game as a single ad placement, we treated it as a launch platform. We built a multi-phase campaign across Tease, Launch, and Sustain, anchored by the creation of National Rehydration Day to turn cultural attention into lasting momentum. The goal wasn’t just reach, it was making hydration a national conversation and translating that attention into measurable growth. Tinuiti helped us scale that moment across platforms with the precision needed to drive both brand impact and performance.

Izzy Rusher, Head of Brand Media, Liquid I.V.

eos: In eos’s Big Game spot, Mikey Day brought the viral “Is it cake?” phenomenon to life, leading participants through a series of reveals where the delicious scent of eos Cashmere Body Mists had them mistaking real people for decadent desserts.

Returning to the Big Game represents an exciting milestone in our evolution. Our 2026 strategy focused on precision and impact, expanding into 22 key markets to meet our community where they live and shop. With Tinuiti, we amplified the cultural momentum of the Super Bowl to reach audiences at scale and drove strong in-store performance.

Carley Caldas, SVP Marketing & Creative, eos

Redefining What It Means to Win

Tinuiti continues to redefine what it means to win the Super Bowl—moving beyond the 30-second spot to orchestrate full-funnel, multi-platform ecosystems designed for sustained impact. With strategy designed around Love Growth; Hate Waste client partners benefit from wins long after the final whistle is blown. 

While the Seattle Seahawks may have won Super Bowl LX, e.l.f. Beauty took home its own trophy, too. Determined by a powerhouse combination of views and engagements, e.l.f. was named YouTube’s 2026 AdBlitz winner for their telenovela-inspired ad, e.l.f. Presenta: MELISA — proving the work didn’t just run in the right channels, but actually resonated with audiences across the globe. 

Behind these results is Tinuiti’s operating philosophy: Love Growth. Hate Waste. By leveraging Bliss Point technology and full-funnel orchestration, Tinuiti transforms tentpole media moments into measurable growth engines. The result: brands that don’t simply show up for the Big Game—they build momentum that lasts well beyond it.

The current landscape presents an opportunity that brands simply cannot afford to overlook. The takeaway here is that there’s room for everyone, regardless of budget constraints. Whether you’re a large established brand or a smaller emerging one, there’s a strategic fit for you within this evolving space

Rachel Costanzo, Senior Director, Media Strategy and Operations, Tinuitirachel-costanzo_headshot

About Tinuiti:
Tinuiti is the largest independent full-funnel marketing agency in the U.S. across the media that matters most, with $4 billion in digital media under management and more than 1,200 employees. Built for marketers who demand growth and accountability, Tinuiti unites media and measurement under one roof to eliminate waste—the biggest growth killer of all—and scale what works. Its proprietary technology, Bliss Point by Tinuiti, reveals the truth around growth and waste, and how to capitalize on it. With expert teams across Commerce, Search, Social, TV & Audio, and more, Tinuiti delivers measurable results with brutal simplicity: Love Growth. Hate Waste. https://tinuiti.com/