CANNES – With retail media networks multiplying and brands demanding better measurement, Instacart’s Adam Silverblatt believes the industry is headed toward consolidation, and accountability will be the deciding factor.
Speaking at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, Silverblatt, Instacart’s head of off-platform ad sales and strategy, said retail media is evolving beyond its roots as a search-driven, bottom-funnel tactic.
“Retail media a couple years ago was still a search business in many ways,” Silverblatt said in a fireside chat with Beet.TV contributor Tameka Kee. “It was, hey, you’re going to buy your search business, you’re going to get an immediate ad and voilà, let’s drive bottom of the funnel.”
Today, with more than 250 retail media networks competing for brand dollars, Silverblatt sees a new phase emerging.
“What you’re going to see is us going from the proliferation phase to a consolidation phase,” he said. “We sit in a spot where we think because of what we provide — this marketplace, the fact that we have retail technology to help many of these smaller to mid-sized retailers bring their ad business to bear — we’ll be able to give brands an advantage.”
Building an integrated ads ecosystem
Instacart’s evolution from a delivery service to what Silverblatt calls a “retail technology company” has been central to its growing influence in retail media. The company now partners with more than 1,800 retailers and over 7,000 brands.
“We’re building this ecosystem, providing tools and technology to many of the retailers to not only be their delivering fulfillment providers, but to also bring their ads business to market,” Silverblatt said.
That integrated approach is designed to simplify a fragmented market and help brands reach incremental audiences, particularly digital-first consumers.
“If you don’t use us, there’s a good chance you’re not going to reach the right people to grow your household penetration,” Silverblatt said.
Going off-platform with partners
Instacart has recently expanded its off-platform advertising strategy through partnerships with major players including Google, Meta, NBCUniversal, Roku, Pinterest and The Trade Desk.
“We always want to make sure that our data is going to drive incremental reach and accretive outcomes,” Silverblatt said. “We always want to make sure that the measurement is going to be able to tie to performance and help brands optimize.”
The company’s partnership with The Trade Desk, for example, gives brands access to Instacart’s full grocery selection and deterministic first-party data in a self-serve, privacy-safe environment.
“Brands can buy the data in the way they like it, through the platform, out of their seat, in a permissioned privacy-safe way,” Silverblatt said. “They can also tap into closed-loop measurement, again all in a self-serve way.”
The same strategy applies to its newly announced collaboration with Pinterest.
“We’re doing it in a way that is transparent and that brands have democratized access, provided their permission, and they can do it with all the amazing tools and benefits that platforms like The Trade Desk and Pinterest have built,” Silverblatt said.
Measuring incrementality and performance
Silverblatt stressed that demonstrating incremental value is core to Instacart’s strategy.
“It is in our DNA to always demonstrate to brands that we’re here to drive incremental reach and or incremental outcomes,” he said.
Using its Conversion API with The Trade Desk, Instacart provides brands with real-time signals during campaigns, showing return on ad spend and offering insights to optimize results.
“Retail media networks are going to have to become more and more accountable to say how and why are they incremental, how is it driving outcomes, and how can you make those outcomes accretive in a live environment,” Silverblatt said.
Complexity versus consolidation
While partnerships with new platforms may seem to add complexity, Silverblatt argued that Instacart helps reduce fragmentation by integrating retail technology across multiple networks.
“We think we can, number one, help greatly consolidate the industry by giving access to a lot of the retail networks that are now using our retail technology to buy ads for them,” he said.
Ultimately, he believes the pressure is on retail media players to prove their value with transparency and measurable results.
“We’re doing that from the start and we will continue to do that,” Silverblatt said. “You’ve got to start with the counterpart.”
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