Instacart assists brand advertisers with new AI tools
Instacart is enabling third-party advertisers on its platforms with new artificial intelligence capabilities.
The grocery technology company, which began efforts to bolster its functionality as an advertising platform by collaborating with e-commerce marketing platform CommerceIQ on an offering called CIQ Advertising for Instacart in October 2021, is now releasing a suite of new AI-based automation tools.
The solutions include AI-equipped landing pages, campaign recommendations, product library enhancements, and a new feature called Universal Campaigns. A brief overview of each new offering follows:
Universal Campaigns
This solution enables Instacart advertisers to create one campaign with a single budget that automatically optimizes across multiple ad formats in real time. Brands can select their business objectives while Instacart’s technology manages budget allocation and format optimization.
Universal Campaigns uses advanced machine learning algorithms to continuously analyze performance data and automatically adjust the mix of formats including sponsored product and shoppable display ads.
Landing pages
New AI-based landing pages enable advertisers to create shoppable brand destinations using AI to generate product showcases and custom copy. Instacart reports one early adopter has already seen a 20% increase in campaign-attributed sales using this new tool.
Recommendations in the Ads Manager tool:
The new recommendations feature provides Ad Manager users with actionable, data-driven insights that can be implemented with a single click to drive campaign performance.
Enhanced product library
Streamlined product library tools are designed to help advertisers manage product information at scale.
AI-generated landing pages are available for all CPG advertisers today. Additional products in the new automation suite are currently in pilot with select brands, with plans for broader availability in the coming months.
Other recent moves by Instacart to enhance its offering to advertisers include an expansion of its existing partnership with TV streaming platform Roku to offer capabilities such as shoppable ads and improved targeting.
[READ MORE: Instacart, Roku enhance ad partnership]
The company has also extended the reach of ads for food service companies in partnership with Cut+Dry, an e-commerce and advertising platform for independent foodservice distributors and manufacturers; as well as launched inspiration-focused ad solutions for CPG brands.
“At Instacart, we’re motivated to use the latest technology to help our brand partners succeed in an increasingly complex advertising landscape,” said Ali Miller, VP of ads product at Instacart. “As the retail media space continues to mature, brands face more choices than ever about where and how to reach consumers. We’re investing in AI-powered automation that can cut through some of that complexity — reducing manual setup and allowing advertisers to maximize performance aligned with their business objectives through automatic optimization across formats and placements.”
Based in San Francisco, Instacart partners with more than 1,800 national, regional, and local retail banners to facilitate online shopping, delivery and pickup services from more than 100,000 stores across North America on the Instacart marketplace.
