By Sam Bradley • February 13, 2025 •
Ivy Liu
Brands often plan to extend their Super Bowl activity beyond game day, the better to maximize their time in the spotlight and the star power of celebrity talent.
In the past, an advertiser might have accomplished that by running cut-down versions of its Big Game spot on linear and digital channels. In 2025, that strategy now includes shoppable CTV ad units.
Unilever’s mayonnaise brand Hellmann’s grabbed headlines and industry attention when it brought back Meg Ryan and Billy Crystal for an ad referencing their classic romcom When Harry Met Sally.
Following that ad (which will have cost at least $7 million, before the fees of its expensive talent), it’s using shoppable ad units on Roku, alongside a host of other channels, to extend the shelf life of its campaign.
It’ll be the first time a Super Bowl campaign has used shoppable ad inventory on Roku, and the debut of “shoppable custom recipe” ad formats, interactive video spots that enable viewers to buy groceries directly from Walmart.
The idea is to “narrow the consumer journey to bridge the conversion,” said Brent Lukowski, Unilever’s senior director of marketing for U.S. condiments.
The extended campaign will run for several weeks beyond Feb. 9 (Lukwoski declined to share the flight’s end date), and will include spending on linear TV, retail media, and paid social including TikTok and Meta platforms. Lukowski declined to share financial details. Unilever, Hellmann’s parent firm, is one of the world’s largest advertisers. Though the company doesn’t disclose the individual budgets of its subsidiary brands, it spent $8.5 billion on marketing and media in 2023, per a Statista estimate.
The shoppable video units activate when a Roku user interacts with a 15-second cut-down of Hellmann’s Super Bowl spot on the streaming platform’s home screen or “Roku City” screensaver function. After a short recipe tutorial on the sandwich eaten by Meg Ryan in the ad, they’re given the chance to follow a QR link or a link shared via text, leading them to a bespoke Walmart page featuring the sandwich’s ingredients.
“We felt [it] would be a great way to try to influence and enhance that path to purchase [and] to make it more likely that they’ll convert at the end of the day,” said Lukowski.
Though social e-commerce is a few years old, shoppable CTV ad units are still a nascent prospect for advertisers. Still, CTV investment is expected to rise steadily; connected TV spending has increased year on year, from 8.5% of total digital ad spend in 2022 to a projected 11.3% ($43.6 billion) in 2026, according to eMarketer. Bespoke, premium ad formats such as Roku’s shoppable recipe unit will likely provoke further investment.
“People are [still] getting used to actually being able to engage with the television and shop off of it,” said Matt Lear, senior manager of enterprise ad sales at Roku.
Amazon Prime Video, for example, only began offering shoppable units in the U.S. last year, with its Thanksgiving football coverage the first occasion they were run against live sports. Roku’s been working to create a range of formats since striking a partnership with Walmart Connect in June 2022, running spots for brands like Neutrogena since then.
In Hellmann’s case, the brand is targeting viewers based on a combination of Roku and Walmart Connect audience data. Lukowski said the brand planned to use that data to target occasional and regular Hellmann’s customers with the campaign.
As a consequence, the advertiser’s shopper marketing team, which manages Hellmann’s own relationship with Walmart Connect, has been more involved in its Super Bowl work than it ordinarily would be in previous years.
It’s a sign of how much CPG advertisers like Hellmann’s have come to rely on retail media insights in their media approach.
“We’re certainly seeing growth in the offerings that Walmart Connect bring to the table, and we really rely on our software marketing team to work with them and continue to innovate,” added Lukowski.
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