Instacart’s second Super Bowl commercial, a 30-second retro disco-pop spot titled “Bananas,” will air during Super Bowl LX on Sunday, February 8, 2026. Directed by Spike Jonze and starring Ben Stiller and Benson Boone, the ad showcases a musical rivalry on a 60-foot LED stage as each performer tries to outshine the other by selecting bananas at their ideal ripeness using Instacart’s new Preference Picker feature. This launch expands Instacart’s Grocery Quality Controls, allowing customers to choose banana ripeness from “Not Ripe” to “Ripe,” with real-time availability varying by retailer and location. To date, Instacart has delivered more than 1.8 billion bananas and recorded over 32 million Shopper Notes for bananas, highlighting how critical small selection preferences are to customers.

Preference Picker joins Inventory Check, Shopper Notes, Replacement Preferences, Smart Backup and Second Store Check within Instacart’s Grocery Quality Controls, designed to minimize substitutions and ensure orders match customer specifications. In early rollouts, Preference Picker has demonstrated a 15% reduction in substitution requests for bananas and is slated for expansion into avocado ripeness and deli meat thickness later this year. Instacart reports that shoppers using Preference Picker spend on average 12% more per order, a metric the company attributes to increased confidence in product selection.

In a January research note, Wedbush analysts assigned Instacart an Underperform rating with a $36 price target, warning that order growth may moderate as macroeconomic uncertainties persist and competition from omnichannel retailers intensifies. The report cites slowing pricing dynamics in grocery delivery and anticipates that without new major service innovations, gross order volume growth could decelerate by up to 150 basis points in 2026. Wedbush acknowledges Instacart’s leadership in grocery technology but suggests investors temper expectations for near-term earnings surprises.