What the ads say

Gymshark had more than a hundred active ads in the UK view of Meta’s Ad Library when we looked. The newest are a payday push that started on 24 September: the Last Chance sale at up to 50% off, new hybrid training kit, and nudges towards joggers, shorts, sports bras and black basics. Around it run the new Whitney leggings, a student discount raised to 20%, Everyday Seamless in new colours from £28, and the We Do Gym brand campaign, live since 7 September.

Many are partnership ads, with a creator’s name shown alongside Gymshark’s. A set that started in early July is still running too: short lines about showing up and staying consistent that point at bestsellers, several with summer copy, and several offering 10% off with the code WELCOME10.

On Google, Gymshark runs about 400 text ads in the UK. The ones we read push the Last Chance sale at up to 50% off, answer questions such as how long gym shorts should be, and promote the Westfield London store.

Where they send people

Most of the ads land on a collection built for them. The sale ads we followed open the Last Chance pages, with 1,042 women’s and 644 men’s products, each showing its old price, new price and discount. The Whitney ad lands on new releases, which opens with Whitney pieces. The hybrid ads land on Conditioning Club, whose first products are labelled as Ian Fonville’s edit, the creator in those ads. A banner across the top of the site rotates the offers: 10% off for email sign-ups, the Last Chance sale, free delivery over £50, the student discount and £10 for referring a friend.

What works

  • Creators at scale. Partnership ads put real people’s names on the ads, and the Conditioning Club page carries the same creator’s edit, so the click lands where the ad pointed.
  • Product-to-page matches. The Whitney ads land on Whitney, the legging guide lands on a bestsellers page that opens with leggings, and the Everyday Seamless ads land on the range, led by its yellow and pink colourways.
  • A dated moment. The payday push launched sale, new-in and category ads on the same day, each with a reason to buy now.
  • Search ads that answer questions. A guide to short lengths meets a real search and earns the click without a discount.
  • Offers that agree. The student ad’s 20% matches the site banner, and the sale pages show every item’s discount.

The gaps we’d close

  1. July is still running. At least eight active ads that started in early July still carry summer lines, such as “Summer sessions hit different”. Eight July ads, some of them the same ones, offer 10% off with WELCOME10, a code that appears nowhere on the pages they link to; the site’s own version is 10% off a first order for email sign-ups. The ad about fits for the whole summer links to Seasonal Essentials, which now opens under the heading Cosy Season, with sweatshirts and fleeces among the first products.
  2. The sale is bigger than the ads say. Ads on both platforms, and the site banner, say up to 50% off. On the Last Chance pages, 311 products are 60% or 70% off: 234 of the women’s and 77 of the men’s. The discount filter runs to 70%, and the sale menu has a 50% Off And Over section. The ads leave the page’s strongest number unused.
  3. An Australian detour. Three versions of the hybrid ad in the UK view of Meta’s Ad Library link to Gymshark’s Australian store. The Conditioning Club tank that costs £25 on the UK site shows there at $45 AUD, with Australian delivery terms. If those versions reach UK shoppers, the click lands in the wrong currency.
  4. Two delivery prices on one page. On the product page of a Last Chance legging, one line says standard delivery costs £5, and the Delivery & Returns panel on the same page says £3.99. Both say it’s free over £50, so a shopper spending less is left to guess.

What we’d do next

  1. Give seasonal copy an end date. Retire or rewrite the July ads with summer lines. Point the WELCOME10 ads at the email sign-up offer the site already runs, or show the code, and who it’s for, on the page they land on.
  2. Test the bigger number. Run the sale ads with up to 60% off against up to 50%, as long as a fair share of the range really sits at 60% or more. Today that’s 311 products.
  3. Keep each market on its own store. Check the final URLs by country in the hybrid campaign, so ads delivered in the UK only ever link to the UK site.
  4. One delivery price. Make the product page say the same thing in both places.

We can’t see Gymshark’s results, so none of this is a verdict on performance. With account access, the first number we’d want is how much of the daily budget still goes to the July ads.