How Instacart is working with The Trade Desk to expand programmatic ads for brands

Instacart has a new deal to open its audience of grocery-delivery customers to ads outside of the app through The Trade Desk, the programmatic ad giant that has struck partnerships with multiple retailers, including Walmart, in recent years. Instacart today announced the new ad deal with The Trade Desk, a demand-side platform that brands use to place ads across the internet and connected TV. Instacart is offering brands a way to connect data on shoppers and retailers from its platform to target ads through The Trade Desk. The Trade Desk already works with multiple retail media networks, some of them run by the same chains that sell through Instacart’s delivery app, including Albertsons, Kroger, CVS, Walgreens and Walmart. Instacart is working with the agency GroupM and brands including Beam Suntory and Nestle USA to test the “audience reach” program, according to Ali Miller, VP of ad product at Instacart. Instacart works with 5,500 brands, according to the company’s press release. Check out the latest Ad Age events and award programs “Many of our partners that we work with today are already using The Trade Desk for their programmatic buys,” Miller said. Advertisers will be able to create targeting groups based on characteristics, such as people who “bought their category, but not their brand,” Miller said, and customers who already “bought their brand.” There also are “lapsed purchasers” and “audiences who have never purchased their brand.” In August, Instacart held its IPO to sell shares in the company. Advertising is a growing component of Instacart’s internet delivery business: It generated $406 million in ad revenue in the first half of the year, up 24% from 2022, according to Instacart’s public filings. Also read: Instacart CMO on the brand’s first airport-focused campaign Meanwhile, programmatic advertising is one of the ways mobile apps and internet services increase demand. Last year, Uber launched an ad business with an annual ad revenue run rate of $650 million, according to its second-quarter results. Uber also runs Uber Eats and Drizly, the alcohol delivery platform. Uber has a programmatic ad deal with Google, which has a demand-side platform that buys ads within Uber’s ecosystem. X, formerly Twitter, recently struck a programmatic ad deal with Google and InMobi, the mobile ad network. Pinterest recently opened ad inventory to Amazon’s ad platform. Retailers also have taken a more significant role in the ad tech ecosystem, providing ad inventory, data about customers and sales, to target campaigns. “Retail media is an important channel in our portfolio marketing mix and Instacart Ads continue to drive performance for our brands,” said Brittney Duncan, senior director, North America, media and digital marketing, at Beam Suntory, in the announcement. “Instacart’s new partnership with The Trade Desk provides an opportunity for us to scale our retail media efforts across our programmatic campaigns.” Instacart also has a partnership with Roku, the connected TV service that runs a demand-side platform, but that is for measurement; when brands run campaigns on Roku they can use Instacart data to measure them. Nestlé USA said today it would test Instacart’s audience data to reach “high-intent customers.” Consumer product brands, such as Nestlé, are turning to retail media and other data-rich networks, partly to keep up with the changing nature of digital advertising. These brands sell in stores and online through third parties, which means they have less direct access to customers and first-party data. Programmatic and retail media partners help fill in the gaps in direct consumer data. “This partnership with The Trade Desk is really about the ability to extend the power of our first-party data to reach high intent audiences, that are modeled based on Instacart data, off site,” Instacart’s Miller said, “so on display inventory and connected TV inventory available via The Trade Desk.”

How Instacart is working with The Trade Desk to expand programmatic ads for brands

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