Anthropic’s Super Bowl ads mocking AI hype push Claude app into top 10

Anthropic’s Super Bowl commercials — which showed darkly funny situations where people ask chatbots for advice only to get nudged toward “cougar” dating sites and height-boosting insoles — appear to be delivering real results. In the days since the ads ran, Anthropic’s AI chatbot Claude has jumped from No. 41 on the U.S. App Store into the top 10. By Friday, Claude reached No. 7, its highest ranking to date, indicating strong user interest in its “no ads” positioning.

Fresh numbers from market intelligence firm Appfigures show Claude’s estimated U.S. downloads across iOS and Android reached about 148,000 from Sunday through Tuesday, the most recent window available. That represents a 32% rise compared to the prior three-day period from Thursday through Saturday, when downloads were roughly 112,000.

Claude averaged 49,200 downloads per day from Sunday through Tuesday, which is 32% higher than its typical average for the same Sunday-to-Tuesday stretch of 37,400 downloads per day.

The performance suggests that Anthropic’s Super Bowl campaign, paired with the company’s recent release of its Opus 4.6 model, successfully drew attention to Claude’s app and its key contrast with ChatGPT. ChatGPT introduced ads to free users this week — exactly the development Anthropic’s commercials were warning about.

Because of that shift, Claude’s app is drawing more attention now than it did at launch.

Anthropic released Claude’s consumer-focused app on iOS in May 2024, and it initially saw a muted response. ChatGPT launched on mobile earlier and quickly pulled in nearly half a million installs in its first five days. Claude, by comparison, recorded 157,000 total global downloads in its first week and did not rank higher than No. 55 on the U.S. App Store.

Claude also saw broader gains globally this past week. Total worldwide downloads across the App Store and Google Play increased 15% from Sunday through Tuesday compared to last Thursday through Saturday. However, Appfigures noted that growth outside the U.S. was less than half the jump in the U.S. market.