The 2024 buzz word in media is “Retail”. Every e-commerce enabled consumer brand is focused on the ability to find more efficient ways to directly market products to their customers. Instacart’s recent product integration with Google Shopping ads kicks off the year with a telling example of how data will be monetized by ad networks and retailers in the coming years.
Instacart’s new Retail Media partnership allows the use of Instacart’s first party consumer data as part of a Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) audience capabilities expansion on Google Shopping. This new set of capabilities is interesting in that audience sharing represents some of the most practical use cases for activating media using clean room technology. The ability to start to integrate ecosystems collaboratively is the manifestation of 10 years of data product dialogue across the industry. All things being equal the availability of Instacart’s segments in programmatic media represents a general shift in the marketplace from third-party to first-party and is beginning to demonstrate the value of these new integrations at identifying high-intent buyers.
The retail media ecosystem is one where we’re seeing heavy influence of pay-to-play environments, especially in day-to-day consumables, which is where Instacart shines. The expectation is that retail media networks will grow “from $46 billion in 2023 to an estimated $109 billion in 2027 – larger than connected TV, digital audio, and linear TV combined.”(Insider Intelligence) While the platform offers little in the way of branding power, it provides incremental sales lift at the edges of saturated markets. Instacart’s integration with Google’s ad inventory means that there is a blended combination of Instacart 1P data that can be layered into Instacart sponsored ads campaigns. While their use of the words “closed-loop attribution” in their press release has to be taken in context of their overall product offering and the density of their consumer base, the opportunity to layer in audience segments from multiple sources does represent an opportunity for incremental lift.
Part of this partnership allows major brands like Heinz, Oikos, and Publicis CPG clients to use first-party media data and measurement to reach high intent consumers. It will be interesting in the coming months to see what other major product releases occur between the larger e-commerce platforms and to what extent brands truly see media efficiency, quality improvements, and incremental sales.