Carolyn Everson on leaving Facebook and her new role at Instacart

Carolyn Everson, the new president at the grocery delivery app Instacart, is playing in NFT markets, thinking about the future of shopping, and reflecting on what she learned from her long run atop Facebook’s ad business. Last week, Everson sat down with Ad Age for one of her first public appearances since June, when she said goodbye to Facebook. She joined Instacart in September. Everson touched on why she left Facebook, which caught another round of public ridicule shortly after her departure, when a whistleblower, ex-Facebook employee Frances Haugen, accused the company of maliciously contributing to social discord. See Ad Age’s 2021 Year in Review here. In the past, Everson would have been one of the first executives at Facebook on the phone with marketers and brands to reassure them about the integrity of the platform. Now, Everson has a top position at Instacart, an up-and-coming shopping platform that has designs beyond groceries. Everson said part of her new role is to handle policy that will shape the corporate culture there. (Excerpts of the discussion have been edited for space and clarity.) Why did you choose Instacart, and how did you feel leaving Facebook? For starters, when I made the decision to leave Facebook, which was a huge decision obviously, I love the company, I love my team, and was really proud to do what we did there. But I really was ready for a new opportunity. I was ready to spread my wings, and when I started looking at the different verticals and areas that I might want to take the next move into, Instacart really struck me as a bit of a unicorn that was out there. I also wanted to expand my scope. You know one of the attractions at Instacart, for me, was of course the advertising sales team is part of my world, and retail partnerships, but also it allowed me to really go into more of the culture and people, because the HR team reports into me, the legal team, the customer care team and business development. Since you left, Facebook came under even more scrutiny after a whistleblower released internal documents about how the company operates. What did you think about the allegations being made against Facebook? Look I certainly didn’t know that that was going to happen, but I’ve been asked that question by many people, and I certainly did not know. Here’s what I can tell you about the company that I left, which is that there are a lot of people trying to work on these problems, but these problems exist. And there is absolutely no doubt that, I think, even if you put your best and brightest, and invest billions in technology, and I said this even when I was there, it’s never going to be perfect. Zero tolerance does not mean zero occurrences, and my sense is that’s going to be an ongoing struggle for the team and the company. Read more: Brands' faith in Facebook remains shaky a month after Everson exit What did you think of Facebook’s name change to Meta? There had been discussions several times while I was there about the branding of the company. I remember when Antonio Lucio came in as the former CMO, there was a whole exercise around the different products and platforms, and at that time a decision was made to keep the company name at Facebook. So, I clearly wasn’t there when the decision was made otherwise, but I think the name is very much in line certainly with what I saw. Mark [Zuckerberg] was investing very heavily in the metaverse and deeply believes that’s sort of the next frontier, so when the name came out I was not so surprised. Is there a place for Instacart in the metaverse? What we’re seeing is just a massive change in consumer behavior in this category, and so when I think about the future of shopping, I do think there is going to be an opportunity to virtually experience going through the aisles of the store. If you were to ask me will groceries appear in the metaverse, I think we’re going to have real estate in the metaverse. I think we’re going to have NFTs; I have a piece of art that one of my friends at Facebook actually painted, behind me, and I’ll have digital NFT art, and we will probably have some version of digital food, who knows. You buy NFTs? I have a few. I happen to be very close to [VaynerMedia CEO] Gary Vaynerchuk. He is extremely passionate about that. I think I have four total NFTs, and I’m playing around to understand what’s happening, but it’s confusing so there’s a lot for me to learn. Read more: How brands are using NFTs How does Instacart fit into the retail and shopper advertising space? Instacart’s ad business really began just a few years ago. Our ad business today for CPG [consumer packaged goods] manufacturers is essentially a featured product or a search offering, so that’s the majority of our business. We have a little bit of display and it’s on the Instacart marketplace. We do run ads on some of the retail partner sites, but we have not yet built a retail media network the way you would probably refer to some of the ones that are out there. But I think that the opportunity for us is huge to drive growth for CPG companies. We have a visibility on shopping behavior across the Unites States, across hundreds of retailers, 55,000 locations, we can do closed loop measurement and have real first-party data, it’s a very actionable investment on Instacart. Read more: The 5 most unexpected ads from 2021 Is Instacart looking to work with brands outside of traditional groceries? There are a lot of other verticals on Instacart and they are growing very quickly. We have a relationship with Petco; we have a relationship with Best Buy, Lowe’s, Sephora, Buy Buy Baby, and those verticals can be bought on Instacart. We talked about some of the bigger brands, right, Unilever, Procter & Gamble, PepsiCo and Coca-Cola, but what about new and emerging brands, how can we work with them? We have companies like [cookie maker] Partake Foods, they started last summer in June or July of 2020, and they are growing incredibly. They are growing 13 times faster than the entire cookie category; on Instacart they grew 2000%. Typically if a new brand starts, it’s Day One for them, it’s really almost impossible for them to get shelf space in a traditional brick-and-mortar environment, but the beauty of digital is that there are endless aisles and there isn’t a fixed space and so there’s endless opportunity for discovery.

Carolyn Everson on leaving Facebook and her new role at Instacart

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