Coinbase's insane Super Bowl ad propels it to no. 2 in the App Store

Coinbase On Iphone (Image credit: Coinbase)

What you need to know

Coinbase's Super Bowl ad showed nothing more than a bouncing QR code.
The ad worked and saw the Coinbase app shoot up the App Store charts.
Coinbase ended in the number two spot in the App Store.

Coinbase's rather weird Super Bowl ad hit the spot more than you might have thought — the company's website couldn't stand the load and its app rose to number two in the App Store charts.

The Super Bowl ad, which amounted to little more than a QR code bouncing around the screen similar to the old-style DVD logo used to on some players' screensavers, definitely had an impact. Coinbase's website couldn't handle the load pushed its way by the ad and the app rose through the App Store charts sharply before settling in the number two spot.

The Block reports that the app was sat in the 186th spot before the ad.

Crypto apps shot up App Store download charts in the US on Monday morning, after a Super Bowl studded with digital assets advertising.Super Bowl LVI's face-off between the Cincinnati Bengals and Los Angeles Rams also saw two of the biggest crypto exchanges, FTX and Coinbase, compete for eye-balls.Data tracked by The Block Research shows that Coinbase's app surged from 186th place to second on the App Store.

The ad in question:

Whoever said the art of advertising was dead? Coinbase also offered people the chance to win via a giveaway as well, something that always goes down well.

Coinbase is one of the better iPhone apps for people who want to trade in cryptocurrencies according to people who know about that world.

Oliver Haslam has written about Apple and the wider technology business for more than a decade with bylines on How-To Geek, PC Mag, iDownloadBlog, and many more. He has also been published in print for Macworld, including cover stories. At iMore, Oliver is involved in daily news coverage and, not being short of opinions, has been known to 'explain' those thoughts in more detail, too. Having grown up using PCs and spending far too much money on graphics card and flashy RAM, Oliver switched to the Mac with a G5 iMac and hasn't looked back. Since then he's seen the growth of the smartphone world, backed by iPhone, and new product categories come and go. Current expertise includes iOS, macOS, streaming services, and pretty much anything that has a battery or plugs into a wall. Oliver also covers mobile gaming for iMore, with Apple Arcade a particular focus. He's been gaming since the Atari 2600 days and still struggles to comprehend the fact he can play console quality titles on his pocket computer.