General Mills, Del Monte, and Dreyer’s to Pioneer In-Store Smart Cart Advertising via Instacart
Advertisements for CPGs like General Mills, Del Monte, and Dreyer’s may soon appear on a shopping cart near you.
These brands are among the first set to participate in Instacart's latest pilot program, showcasing digital advertisements on its AI-powered smart carts within the store.
The retail media initiative is intended to boost consumer engagement, offering personalized, real-time advertisements on display screens while shoppers visit stores, while also opening up new revenue streams for participating brands through a revenue share model.
The last-mile delivery service will trial the ad features on its Caper Carts at Good Food Holdings’ Bristol Farms supermarkets in Southern California, with plans to roll out the initiative at more locations in the coming months, the company said in a press release.
Caper Carts – which the company acquired in 2021 – are part of Instacart’s Connected Stores collection of technologies, which are intended to help grocers merge the digital and in-store shopping experience.
The Caper Carts use AI-powered computer vision technology which allows customers to add items to their digital checkout list by placing them into the cart. Once the shopping is finished, customers can check out directly from the cart.
Shoppers using the Caper Carts at participating retailers will be able to see:
- A home screen greeting featuring new products, brands, deals, and seasonal promotions right at the beginning of their shopping journey.
- A customer visiting in the next month might see a banner highlighting limited-edition Chocolate Strawberry Cheerios from General Mills for Valentine’s Day, for example.
- Personalized recommendations to customers based on their real-time shopping behaviors or the contents of their cart.
- If a customer adds ice cream cones to their cart, for instance, the system will analyze this information and suggest complementary items, such as Dreyer’s ice cream.
- Instacart's Grand Plan for Brand Value
Engagement with grocery and in-store retail media is a key tenet of Instacart’s business strategy. When the company filed for IPO last year, it laid out plans to bring value to brands through industry-wide partnerships, first-party data, measurability, data-driven insights, a broad solution set, and national retailer scale.
One of the first of these partnerships was with PepsiCo.In a letter at the time, Instacart CEO Fidji Simo said, “Every decision we make as a company stems from a fundamental belief that, in order to succeed, we need to work together across the entire grocery industry — supporting retailers and brand partners, giving consumers an affordable, accessible and personalized experience they can’t find anywhere else, and creating flexible earnings opportunities for shoppers.”
This summer, the company introduced expanded functionalities to its suite of e-commerce solutions, simplifying the process for retailers to personalize their online stores and build out shoppable campaigns customized for holidays or other special events. Early adopters included supermarket chain Stew Leonard’s, with Gelson’s Markets planning to implement the new features on their virtual storefronts as well.
Retail Media Takes Center Stage
According to CGT's sister brand the Path to Purchase Institute, retail media is a fast-growing space, with their 2023 trends survey indicating that 58% of respondents increased their investment in retail media networks in 2022.
Recently, PepsiCo opted to engage with new full-funnel video advertising technology from Sam's Club retail media platform, MAP. The new capabilities allow advertisers – like PepsiCo – to leverage connected TV ads, sponsored videos, and interactive videos with member data for targeted campaigns. In September, The Clorox Company signed up to advertise on MAP as well, citing the network’s expanded analytics capabilities and access to member data as reasons for making the move.
