Instacart Forges Ahead With Robust Retail Media Solutions

Grocery technology company Instacart has partnered with The Trade Desk, a global advertising technology company, to help select CPG advertisers enrich their programmatic campaigns with the power of retail media. The partnership aims to make CPG advertisers’ media buys more data-driven on The Trade Desk by enabling them to reach purchase-minded audiences based on Instacart’s consumer behavior and product purchase data.

Pilot partners, including Beam Suntory and GroupM, will soon be able to build and activate Instacart-informed audiences across omnichannel media buys through The Trade Desk. By taking this data-driven approach, CPG brand partners for the first time will be able to broaden their reach beyond Instacart’s platform and connect with high-intent consumers ahead of their next grocery shop across CTV and display channels offered by The Trade Desk.

Instacart will make category-based purchase data available for brands on The Trade Desk, enabling them to build larger, high-intent audiences that reflect consumer shopping behaviors across Instacart’s marketplace of more than 1,400 retail banners in North America. The partnership enables pilot brand partners to layer their programmatic campaigns in The Trade Desk with exclusive Instacart data to build category-based audience segments like:

• Bought their category, but not their brand
• Bought their brand
• Lapsed brand purchasers
• Audiences who have never purchased their brand

“Brands continue to tell us that they are looking for performant, data-driven solutions to maximize their return on investment,” said Ali Miller, VP of ad product at Instacart, who adds that the company “is attractive to marketers who want to drive results by reaching high-intent consumers on a platform enhanced by our depth of consumer behavioral data and highly measurable outcomes. Now we can help brands expand their reach to audiences off our Marketplace via our partnership with The Trade Desk. It’s critical for brands to reach consumers at scale, and ultimately drive purchase – and we’re excited to provide new solutions to help achieve those goals.”

“Instacart brings a wealth of valuable life-stage and verified purchase data to our platform for CPG advertisers,” said Ben Sylvan, VP, data partnerships at The Trade Desk, which is based in Ventura, Calif. “Instacart-informed audiences will help The Trade Desk advertisers be a lot smarter with their media buying across the open internet, enabling them to reach their most valuable buyers. We’re excited to see how these advertisers can come up with new, innovative campaigns, especially on connected TV.”

“Retail media is an important channel in our portfolio marketing mix, and Instacart Ads continue to drive performance for our brands,” noted Brittney Duncan, senior director NA media and digital marketing at New York-based Beam Suntory. “Instacart’s new partnership with The Trade Desk provides an opportunity for us to scale our retail media efforts across our programmatic campaigns and inspire even more like-minded customers to enjoy our premium spirits.”

“Over the last few years, retail media has emerged as a highly valuable lever for us to connect our clients with high-intent consumers directly at the point of purchase,” said Lauren Lavin, executive director, commerce at New York-based GroupM Nexus North America. “GroupM continues to secure first-to-market opportunities, like Instacart’s new pilot partnership with The Trade Desk, so our CPG clients’ investments can work smarter across the complex media landscape we know today.”

The Trade Desk partnership marks Instacart’s continued investment in off-platform solutions for its more than 5,500 brand partners. In April, Instacart launched the first set of off-platform measurement capabilities with a CTV device maker to help CPG brands measure the impact of streaming TV ads on e-commerce purchases.

San Francisco-based Instacart works with grocers and retailers to transform how people shop. The company partners with more than 1,400 national, regional and local retail banners to facilitate online shopping, delivery and pickup services from more than 80,000 stores across North America on the Instacart Marketplace. The company has approximately 600,000 Instacart shoppers.