CANNES – Instacart is leaning heavily into measurement, attribution and advanced technology as retail media networks face growing demands for transparency and incremental performance. That was the message from Morgan O’Hara, senior director of food brand partnerships at Instacart, in an interview with Beet.TV contributor David Kaplan at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity.
“We have a bit of a framework and it’s really been evolving,” O’Hara said. “Over the past three years or so, we’ve really been thinking through what is critical to our partners and how are we going to be thinking about measurement in the future.”
Building confidence with verified metrics
Instacart, the grocery technology and delivery platform, has made measurement a top priority as advertisers increasingly expect not only digital reach but clear proof of incremental results.
“We’re proud that we’re one of the first retail media networks to be MRC accredited,” O’Hara said, referring to accreditation from the Media Rating Council. “So now brands can feel very confident when they place any sort of advertising on Instacart. We know that it is viewable and they can feel that it is verified.”
But basic metrics like return on ad spend (ROAS) are no longer enough for sophisticated advertisers, O’Hara explained. “In early days, ROAS was a pretty critical, you know, benchmark metric that everybody was looking at to determine success,” she said. “But as retail media evolved, the bar raised and clients started to ask, is this truly incremental?”
To answer that, Instacart has invested in proving incrementality: the ability to show that advertising directly drives new sales. “We’ve built some great incrementality measurements and we’ve been able to show that more than 15% of sales are incremental when you’re leveraging our sponsor product,” O’Hara said, adding that some brands have seen even higher results.
Linking online and in-store effect
The next frontier for Instacart is demonstrating how online advertising affects offline behavior, especially at traditional brick-and-mortar locations.
“As soon as you prove out one thing, the next question is, okay, so it’s incremental when I place an ad on your platform, but is it incremental to what I’m doing in brick and mortar?” O’Hara said.
To help answer that, Instacart has partnered with Circana, a third-party measurement firm, to track consumer behavior across channels. “We’ve run studies across multiple categories and multiple brands, and we’ve seen up to 70% of the audiences that we’re reaching would otherwise not have purchased in store,” O’Hara said. “So we know that we feel very good about not only incrementality on placing an ad on our site, but also the incrementality of that to off platform and brick and mortar.”
Tech that powers entire grocery journey
Instacart’s ambitions extend well beyond e-commerce, with technology designed to connect the entire grocery shopping experience, both online and in stores. One example is Instacart’s AI-powered Caper Cart.
“We’ve developed this incredible AI-powered geolocation aware cart that has an awareness of weights and measures where consumers can place items right in the cart and they’re immediately recognized and added to cart,” O’Hara said. “What makes this so valuable for our advertisers is that the location base helps them understand so many signals about what consumers are doing in real time.”
That data fuels more personalized and relevant advertising, including promotions aimed at capturing attention throughout the shopper journey. While measurement for these newer in-store experiences is still developing, O’Hara emphasized that “we’ll see a lot of an evolution in the next few years there.”
Unique data, expanding partnerships
O’Hara underscored that Instacart’s platform is unique because it is not a traditional retailer, but rather a unified entry point for consumers across more than 1,800 stores spanning categories such as grocery, mass retail, beauty, pet and alcohol.
“All of that consumer data is at our fingertips,” O’Hara said. “We have 100% digital verified consumer. The recency of that data, it’s very high fidelity and it’s truly quality data.”
That data advantage is central to Instacart’s expanding advertising ecosystem, which now includes partnerships across social, programmatic and digital channels. “We actually announced Pinterest Monday, which we’re thrilled about,” O’Hara said.
Still, O’Hara acknowledged that the retail media space is evolving and measurement remains a work in progress. Instacart is investing in tools that help advertisers optimize campaigns in real time and track results seamlessly.
“The people that will be truly successful in this space will be thinking forward to how can we enable our advertisers to make buying more seamless, to democratize our data to layer on top of any other data they’re using today,” O’Hara said. “Targeting is only the first part, but then the second part will be then how do we make it truly measurable on the back end.”
That includes leveraging Instacart’s conversion data and investing in “clean room” technology, enabling brands to build audiences and measure impact in privacy-safe environments.
“We’re also partnering with third parties to better understand incrementality in a way that they’re used to consuming it and they trust,” O’Hara added.
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