Now firmly entrenched in Americans’ shopping habits, Instacart is eyeing the growing retail media space. Laura Jones, CMO of Instacart, joins The Current Podcast to share the strategy behind the company’s tie-ups with Peacock and Roku and how she’s reaching shoppers by framing them as the COOs of their households.

Episode Transcript

Please note, this transcript  may contain minor inconsistencies compared to the episode audio.

Damian: (00:01)

I'm Damian Fowler.

Ilyse: (00:02)

And I'm Ilyse Liffreing And

Damian: (00:04)

Welcome to this edition of the current podcast.

Ilyse: (00:10)

This week we're delighted to talk with Laura Jones, the chief marketing Officer of Instacart.

Damian: (00:16)

Laura has been on a rampage at Instacart since she left Uber and joined the company. In June, 2021, Laura launched the brand's first integrated brand campaign, built an internal creative studio and performance media function, and scaled the marketing department five times to more than 150 people. What

Ilyse: (00:35)

Started as a grocery delivery service quickly boomed during the pandemic to the point where Instacart now has over 7 million monthly active orders and works with 1400 retailers growing into areas like retail media, on and off its platform.

Laura: (00:55)

So Instacart started just over a decade ago and started out as a grocery delivery company. And then when you fast forward to today, the business looks a lot different, the world has changed a lot, there's been a global pandemic and we've come out the other side and Instacart has really evolved over the course of this journey. So we've transformed from being just grocery, just delivery to now a service that has many more retailers on the platform. Of course, uh, most of America's top grocers, but other verticals that we serve like beauty with Sephoras, um, home improvement with Lowe's, as well as of course different modalities. So there's delivery, there's pickup, and we've extended into, uh, B2B offerings as well. So we have a retail enablement platform that our retailers use to power some of their online grocery services and pickups and really continuing to innovate now even getting into in-store.

Laura: (01:54)

So really thinking about how, you know, in a post pandemic world, customers are really shopping in a more omnichannel way. It's not just delivery, it's not just in-store, it's much more of a hybrid. So we've developed technologies like caper carts or carrot tags, other in-store tools that help bring some of the magic of online shopping into that in-store experience. So you can see that the company has really evolved and as a result, you know, the way that we're thinking about our brand and the future of innovation at the company has to evolve and keep pace as well.

Ilyse: (02:30)

On that note, from a brand perspective, how have you really worked to evolve the identity of Instacart from that delivery service to a major media platform? Now

Laura: (02:40)

We really wanted to build across all four sides of the marketplace and make sure that we were building a brand that would mirror the dynamism is of the business. So really wanted to root ourselves in, in our heritage and in our core equity, which of course is the carrot, and really stretch that, um, into a new design system that would enable us to show up and in a really seamless way in all these new different touchpoints that that we have. And so a lot of what my journey has been has been really trying to build out that marketing team across the four sides of the marketplace and build out all the different functions. So of course, continuing to double down on our performance marketing strength, but also building out functions like product marketing, brand marketing, making sure we have great co-marketing teams to partner with both our retailers and our advertisers so that we can go to market in partnership with all of them. And what that enables for us is not just to be a marketing team, but also to help enable other marketing teams. From a co-marketing standpoint, we have, uh, 5,500 brands on our platform from category leaders to emerging brands. And this next chapter of marketing is really about partnering with those brands as well as with our retail partners to make sure that we are going to market using all of our channels together and really helping provide insights to help each of their business grow.

Ilyse: (04:12)

How do you feel all these additives have really helped differentiate the brand, not only from a consumer standpoint, but perhaps to advertisers as

Laura: (04:23)

Well? One of the things that this has unlocked for us is the ability to do true full funnel marketing. So instead of just capturing inbound demand through, um, those classical performance channels, we've also been able to really start to generate more demand by going out there and reaching a broader audience and telling a more robust story across channels. So we see that by showing up in both upper and lower funnel and doing so in a coordinated way, we're able to really grow the category and deepen the use cases for existing users as well. So it's been a really critical, uh, business driver that we can go out with a full funnel program. Then from a advertiser standpoint, because of this depth that we have and the level of sophistication that we have when it comes to our own consumer marketing, I think that gives us a, a really thoughtful edge when it comes to thinking about how we're building tools for our advertisers.

Laura: (05:23)

So of course, I think the reason that most advertisers come to Instacart in the beginning is just because we are so close to the point of purchase, we are quite literally at the point of purchase. So what we find is that our ads on average deliver more than a 15% incremental sales lift and in some cases twice that for our brand partners. So it's a really valuable service to, to our partners, but again, inspired by our own journey, we've thought a lot about creating more spaces in the upper funnel for our advertisers. So of course, sponsored product listings and pricing and promotional discounts are, are wonderful, but once you've tapped out that kind of low hanging fruit from a demand standpoint, you need to generate more demand. What I was talking about, you know, from our own first party experience and the way that we do that is through introducing new formats that help drive more consideration for consumers that might be a bit higher up in that purchase funnel.

Laura: (06:19)

And so what that looks like for us are shoppable video ads, shoppable display ads in ways to help introduce customers to new categories or products that they might not have been actively considering before that shopping session, but we can actually really make that case to get them focused on it, get their attention, and then help drive that purchase and really be able to measure again, the impact of, of those different formats. The final frontier, which I think will bring the two together and that we've started on this year is that co-marketing I was mentioning. So we can move up the funnel within our own platform, but I think the, the really exciting piece for me is what does it look like when we move off platform and go to market together with a brand partner and really make their existing multi-channel campaigns shoppable regardless of what channel they're occurring on. Um, the co-marketing campaign we did earlier this year with AB InBev, um, in the NFL playoffs, um, making their TV campaign shoppable and integrating it with our CRM system so that we could deliver push notifications timed to hit folks as they're viewing TV ads. And we've done a ton of that over the past year and we're really excited to see the momentum that this program has in addition to our on-platform ads.

Damian: (07:37)

Could you talk a little bit more about how you use customer data to kind of close that gap between the top and the bottom of the funnel?

Laura: (07:46)

We take data protection and privacy very seriously. We don't tell consumer data to our retail partners, nor do we share competitive data across retailers or brands. Uh, what we do do is leverage anonymized, aggregated insights. And I think that's especially powerful in this world where our industry is grappling with signal loss and looming third party cookie deprecation. And so that's why this data is really valuable and can be provide a lot of insights to our partners as we think about, you know, how can we more effectively target folks at different stages in the funnel. From our standpoint, we have an incredibly deep understanding of online purchase behavior. Our customers are building large baskets, they're spending a lot of time to engage. They're doing their primary weekly grocery shop on the platform. And so we have a lot of insights about the, the purchase behavior that underlies that.

Laura: (08:44)

We can also surface insights about complimentary or adjacent purchasing behavior. So for example, if someone's buying peanut butter, it's pretty likely that they might also be buying jelly. And and some of those are obvious, like the ones I just described, but some of them are maybe not as obvious. So cat and dog food customers are more likely to purchase coffee on Instacart than the average Instacart consumer, that that is not as obvious as peanut butter and jelly or customers who buy diapers are more likely to also purchase jerky and trail mix. So if you imagine, you know, being a marketer and having access to this data, it really helps you, number one with the targeting. And number two, just getting those kind of deeper insights that help you have those aha moments that might help you think about your consumer in a whole new way.

Ilyse: (09:28)

Now in 2022, you introduced display ads onto your platform. How important are these units really to those big CPG companies? And then how do these display units actually help the smaller brands compete with the larger ones?

Laura: (09:43)

Yeah, so display ads are a great way for brands looking to bring engaging, targeted creative content to consumers. And this really helps with driving brand awareness, new product introductions and inspiration while people are browsing those digital aisles. And so these kinds of top of funnel units, um, can be especially useful I think for emerging brands that might be less familiar to consumers or for new or emerging categories where there might be more education required. And then for larger brands, shoppable display units are a great way to showcase complimentary products across the portfolio and really help with that regimen building. And it does so all within one shoppable ad unit. And of course that's a adjacent to all of the other kinds of ad units that A CPG can purchase, like a sponsored product listing or pricing and promotional discount. So you can really tell a story and then provide incentives for consumers to convert and get that full closed loop measurement all at once.

Ilyse: (10:44)

This past advertising week, New York Instacart announced it would begin to work with brands to reach customers off platform for brands this can turn their Instacart approach into more of an omni-channel strategy, basically allowing them to reach Instacart's customers across channels like CTV and display. Can you describe the value in this arrangement for advertisers?

Laura: (11:08)

What we're really trying to do here is provide a way for our CPG advertisers to leverage our data across all their media buys. You know, it really helps us realize this vision of leveraging data to help our partners grow their businesses and doing so in a way that is even more flexible for them. And so they're able to layer their programmatic campaigns with exclusive Instacart data to build category based segments. Like for example, somebody who's bought their category but not their brand, somebody who's bought their brand lapsed brand purchasers or someone who's never purchased with their brand. And this kind of targeting as a marketer is of course so valuable. Um, and we're really excited to have this pilot live and to start looking at how we can continue to lean into this capability and really enable our partners to grow their businesses.

Damian: (12:04)

Now you recently announced that you'd be bundling, uh, NBCU streaming service peacock for Instacart plus subscribers. You've also partnered with Roku. So I'm wondering if you could talk about the natural synergies between Instacart and streaming platforms like that.

Laura: (12:19)

The customer we serve, we like to think of as the COO of their household. They're often someone who might be a, a busy parent or a busy individual who's got a lot going on. And oftentimes, you know, there are folks that really do enjoy, um, in that limited spare time they have. They can be streaming their favorite shows and getting their grocery shopping done at once. So it's a real win-win. And and it's also, you know, I think from an advertiser standpoint, exciting because again, with Roku, if you have somebody who's watching an ad and shopping on Instacart, again, you have that ability to really start to close the loop in terms of the incremental impact of those ads as, as evidenced through Instacart purchase data.

Damian: (13:01)

Could you say a little bit more about how that gap between CTV and shoppable ads is closing? I know we touched on that earlier in the conversation, but how has Instacart as a media platform really enabled this kind of connection?

Laura: (13:14)

You know, I think brands often struggle with attribution from top of funnel, and this is something of course, you know, even when we're going out with top of funnel, it's hard. It's, it's a harder measurement journey than, you know, click-based ads. Um, and so our closed loop measurement is able to offer that higher confidence in media buys. And so being able to actually measure the impact of off platform ads and see that born out in, in the data from Instacart and showing the incrementality of those ads has been really huge for our advertisers.

Damian: (13:53)

What would you say will be a good example of how that discovery at the top of a funnel and performance with shoppable ads kind of merged?

Laura: (14:00)

A great example of that was our partnership with AB InBev this year, um, in the lead up to the Super Bowl. And so we were able to partner with Michelob Ultra and they were the first partner to create an Instacart co-marketing campaign that leveraged this shoppable capability via a QR code. We were able to really support them in this full funnel campaign that was running across linear social C-T-V-O-T-T and making sure that for every time they were out there with a brand message, there was a clear path to conversion for that consumer. What is so exciting about that is that for us, we get to show up with a brand that people absolutely love and really have a, a strong use case for of course, um, beer and, and football as we all know, go very well together. Um, and for them there was the ability to drive consumers to purchase and to really, you know, go from watching an ad to being able to have that product delivered in as fast as 30 minutes.

Laura: (15:06)

That's actually really game changing and I'm so excited when I think about what we could do with that. And especially when you start to layer in other channels like CRM and social and the ability for that kind of concurrent consumption connected to an entertainment event, I think could be really game changing. And we're seeing this really starting to pay off. So in Q3, our advertising and other revenue was up 19% year over year, and this is really driven by stronger than anticipated advertiser spending. And when we think about next year, we're really excited to continue to show up in these key seasonal moments, whether that's cold and flu, football, spring cleaning, or Mother's Day.

Damian: (15:44)

That's interesting. Do you have any brand campaigns coming up in 2024 that you are able to talk about?

Laura: (15:51)

We are currently shooting a really great set of spots against the cold and flu season. Uh, it's funny because it's not the most glamorous time of year, so, you know, when we were initially talking about showing up with a campaign, I was a little bit like, oh, is this really how we wanna show up as a brand? But then when I thought about our value proposition, which is really taking care of that COO of the household, and these people are caregivers and we help them take care of themselves and their families. So we're excited to lean into that moment and hopefully tell some stories that really resonate with consumers and and with our brand partners.

Ilyse: (16:30)

How do you think about the evolving Instacart brand looking towards the future

Laura: (16:37)

From a brand identity standpoint? We've got an amazing foundation to build equity with from a brand storytelling standpoint. We've got an endless trove of stories to tell because every day in the life of a, of a busy household conductor is is full of those moments of trials and tribulations and moments where Instacart can really come in and, and help offer that care for that head of household. So I think that in the year ahead, we've got a great year ahead of us and a ton of momentum from a brand standpoint and only made stronger by the strength of our retailer and CPG brands when we show up together in the market.

Damian: (17:19)

And that's it for this edition of the current podcast. We'll be back next week. So stay tuned.

Ilyse: (17:25)

The current podcast is produced by Wonder Media Network. Our theme is by love and caliber. The current team includes Chris Ley and Cat Festi.

Damian: (17:34)

And remember, the

Laura: (17:35)

Really exciting piece for me is what does it look like when we move off platform and go to market together with a brand partner and really make their existing multi-channel campaigns shoppable regardless of what channel they're occurring on.

Damian: (17:50)

And if you like what you hear, please subscribe and leave as a review. Also tune into our other podcast, the current report, our weekly roundup of what's making news in digital media. I'm eis and I'm Damien and we'll see you next time.