Instacart partners with YouTube to offer shoppable ads

The news: Instacart is expanding its partnership with Google Shopping Ads to YouTube, as it looks to grow its offsite retail media capabilities.

• Instacart’s first-party retail media data will power shoppable YouTube ads for CPG ad partners; the offering is currently being piloted by Clorox and Publicis.
• The announcement follows a partnership between the delivery platform and The New York Times to make the latter’s Cooking content shoppable.

How it works: CPG advertisers will be able to use Instacart’s first-party data to find and reach high-intent consumers on YouTube, and receive closed-loop measurement.

• Viewers who click on the ads will be directed to an Instacart product page, where they can order the promoted items for same-day delivery.
• “What we’re offering our brands’ partners is the ability to better target their messages, to make sure they’re reaching high-intent consumers and to measure the true impact of their marketing spend,” the company’s vice president of ads product, Ali Miller, told Modern Retail.

Why it matters: Instacart’s retail media growth relies on its ability to help advertisers reach shoppers on other channels, particularly those—like YouTube—that are important avenues for product research and discovery.

• YouTube dominates time spent with media: US adults spend an average of 36 minutes per day on the platform, outpacing Netflix, Hulu, and Facebook, per our forecast, and making it highly attractive to advertisers.
• While the platform currently lags when it comes to social-buying adoption, Miller says Instacart’s decision to launch shoppable ads on YouTube is “enhancing a behavior that’s already happening” and speeding up the path between discovery and purchase.

The big picture: Offsite will make up just 19.5% of total retail media ad spending this year, but we expect sales to shoot up by 61.5% to $10.64 billion—making it a significant growth driver for the broader retail media sector.