Instacart launches shoppable ads
Instacart is expanding the capabilities of its ad product suite with direct commerce functionality.
The on-demand delivery platform is releasing two new interactive advertising solutions: shoppable video ads and enhanced shoppable display ads. Instacart is currently piloting these offerings with CPG brands including Dove, Mondelēz International, PepsiCo, and S.Pellegrino.
Instacart’s new shoppable video ads provide seamless add-to-cart functionality for customers viewing the ads on its site. Advertisers can include rich stories, motion and audio within shoppable video ads. Instacart plans to test and learn with its CPG brand partners to determine best practices and refine the shoppable video product when it is available to all brands participating in Instacart’s self-service Ads Manager portal later in 2022.
Instacart has also created a new, iterative, shoppable display ad format designed to serve as a CPG brand’s contextual “pop-up shop” on Instacart. Shoppable display ads feature brand imagery integrated with direct add-to-cart functionality. More than 40 CPG brands have piloted the shoppable display product, which will be generally available to all brand partners in Ads Manager later in summer 2022. Dove is one early shoppable display pilot participant as part of its “Nourish Your Beauty” campaign.
“Advertisers choose Instacart because we’ve built a platform with high-intent consumers, unparalleled scale of retailers, and closed-looped measurement, all of which drives meaningful results for our brand partners,” said Ali Miller, VP of ads product at Instacart. “We designed our new shoppable ad products to create more brand storytelling opportunities for CPGs, help them inspire and reach new and existing consumers, and ultimately drive sales in a singular unit. We see that these kinds of shoppable rich media experiences resonate with consumers as well, as we’re bringing more discovery and inspiration to the online shopping experience. We’re grateful to work with brand partners who have been excited to innovate with us and incubate these formats along the way to drive maximum impact.”
Instacart serves CPG advertisers
Instacart has been expanding its capabilities as a platform for CPG advertising for the past two. In May 2020, the company rolled out a self-serve ad service called Instacart Ads which brands and agencies can use to purchase search ads, set goals and advertising budgets, and manage bidding.
And in October 2021, Instacart collaborated with e-commerce marketing platform CommerceIQ on an offering called CIQ Advertising for Instacart. The service, which includes an API integration, enables CPG brands to obtain real-time visibility across all their campaigns on the Instacart Ads self-serve ad platform, as well as leverage CommerceIQ artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities to automatically optimize Featured Product ads on Instacart in bulk.
In January 2022, the company released a collection of advertiser solutions, including brand pages and a suite of display applications designed to maximize brand reach and consumer awareness for CPG brands. The new products are designed to enable advertisers to run a full-funnel marketing strategy throughout the entire consumer shopping journey on Instacart – from awareness to consideration to purchase.
Instacart partners with more than 800 national, regional and local retail brands to facilitate online shopping, delivery and pickup services from more than 70,000 stores across more than 5,500 cities in North America.