Cash App hopes connected TV broadens its reach, starting with an ad starring Serena Williams

Cash App is using connected TV for the first time, aiming to reach a broader consumer base and framing the payment service brand as offering a range of financial services. The “That’s Money” campaign, made with agency R/GA, comes as the brand seeks to craft its image as “a one-stop shop for all your financial needs” from bitcoin investments to P2P payments, said Catherine Ferdon, Cash App’s head of marketing and brand. The national campaign marks the Block Inc.-owned brand’s first time running its ads on the streaming platforms Hulu, Tubi and ESPN+. Its new 15-second spot stars tennis player Serena Williams, who comes home from a night out and uses Cash App to pay her babysitter. The ad aims to show how the app allows people to “move assets effortlessly between people, places and experiences,” said Ferdon. Cash App first worked with Williams in April, when she spoke on the brand’s behalf on a panel at a Bitcoin conference. The new ad starts running today and is slated to air until the end of the year. Other upcoming spots focus on other features such as Cash Card and Bitcoin investing, starring celebrities such as football wide receiver Odell Beckham Jr., who also spoke at the Bitcoin conference. Gen Z and millennials, along with early adopters in the U.S’s Southeastern region, have been the brand’s “sweet spot for a long time,” said Ferdon. Now, the aim is “to reach so many more people than we have,” she said. Square, another Block brand, made Ad Age’s list of brands getting noticed by Gen Z in the first quarter of this year. The campaign is national but the brand has “high hopes to bring this into a more global state,” said Ferdon. Despite inflation, “Cash App is continuing to flourish and we see no signs of stopping,” she said. While losing out to competitor PayPal globally, Cash App dominates the U.S. market in downloads, according to a July report from data tracker Apptopia. Cash App has 80 million annual users globally as of March, according to the brand's investor day presentation. In addition to YouTube, smaller out-of-home ads and social media marketing such as Instagram and Snapchat, the brand also views its peer-to-peer payments themselves as another form of advertising, according to its annual report from February. “We do not generate revenue on the majority of peer-to-peer transactions and for these transactions we characterize card issuance costs, peer-to-peer costs and risk loss as a sales and marketing expense,” reads the report. ~ ~ ~CLARIFICATION: A previous version of this story referred to Ferdon's title as head of marketing and brand rather than head of marketing and brands. It also did not include the word “assets” in one of her comments. The story has been updated to reflect those revisions.

Cash App hopes connected TV broadens its reach, starting with an ad starring Serena Williams

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