Katie Daleo of DoorDash: Commerce Media Finds Its Moment
CANNES, France — Consumer packaged goods marketers have spent decades figuring out who their customers are. DoorDash would also like them to consider a more immediate question: What are those customers doing right now, and do they urgently need cough medicine or a pint of ice cream?
Katie Daleo, general manager of consumer packaged goods ads at DoorDash, said commerce media is increasingly moving beyond demographic targeting to focus on the occasions and intentions that drive purchases.
In an interview with Beet.TV contributor David Kaplan at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, Daleo described how DoorDash is using its purchase data, advertising formats and artificial intelligence to help brands reach consumers closer to the moment they decide to buy something.
The moment may matter as much as the demographic
Daleo, who came from a brand-management background, said traditional audience segmentation remains important. Brands still need to understand whom they serve, how people use their products and what job those products perform.
“I don’t think that ever goes away, right?” Daleo said. “That’s very much like the soul of a brand.”
But a commerce platform can see another valuable signal: what someone is trying to accomplish at a particular moment.
DoorDash has 56 million monthly active users, Daleo said. A brand’s traditional demographic target might represent only a fraction of those consumers, even though plenty of people outside that group could still buy its products.
That makes purchase intent especially useful. A parent looking for over-the-counter medicine when a child wakes up sick at 3 a.m. presents one kind of occasion. Someone hunting for ice cream at 10 p.m. presents another, presumably less medically urgent one.
DoorDash wants advertisers to understand those moments alongside demographics and consumer profiles. The company continues to invest in behavioral targeting while helping brands study how customers find their products and move toward a purchase.
Think globally, sell ice cream locally
Kaplan asked how global brands can balance scale with local relevance across DoorDash, Wolt and Deliveroo.
Daleo said the answer begins with finding consumer behaviors that cross borders.
“Kids wake up at 3 AM with fevers in the US as well as France,” she said. “People like ice cream at 10 PM, you know, regardless of where you live.”
Human civilization may have its differences, but apparently late-night dessert cravings are one of the remaining pillars of international unity.
“The execution needs to be local,” Daleo said, citing creative, messaging and media mix.
Brands tend to lean more heavily into lower-funnel advertising in the U.S., while using more upper- and mid-funnel tactics overseas, she said. The challenge is to find a common consumer truth that can support a global strategy while adapting the execution to individual markets.
AI gets a job cleaning up the complexity
No advertising conversation at Cannes would be complete without asking about AI, possibly under penalty of losing one’s festival credentials.
“Awesome, can’t get away that question on AI,” Daleo joked when Kaplan raised the subject.
For DoorDash, however, the practical application is fairly straightforward.
“AI needs to strip out that complexity,” Daleo said.
That complexity is considerable. Brands may be managing hundreds of campaigns across DoorDash and other platforms. DoorDash offers auto bidding for sponsored-product campaigns, allowing advertisers to turn over some optimization work to the platform.
But advertisers don’t necessarily want an algorithm handed the car keys without knowing where it plans to drive.
Daleo said brands asked for more visibility into how campaigns were being optimized. DoorDash responded by adding controls including minimum return-on-ad-spend targets and the ability to optimize for clicks or sales.
The company has taken a similar approach with Smart Campaigns for restaurants, which personalize promotional offers based on which ones are expected to perform best.
Daleo said there’s plenty of interest in AI among advertising partners, but also “a little bit of skepticism or unease.” That means automation needs to simplify campaign management without stripping marketers of the control they still want.
Commerce media moves up the funnel
Kaplan also asked why delivery platforms, which were originally built to move products, increasingly are being discussed alongside premium media properties.
Daleo pointed to three factors: audiences, advertising formats and data.
DoorDash’s 56 million monthly active users give advertisers significant reach. More than half are DashPass subscribers, Daleo said, and those customers make purchases on the platform about nine or 10 times a month.
The company also offers formats designed to reach consumers at multiple stages of the purchase journey, from advertising on the DoorDash homepage and store pages through post-checkout opportunities on DoubleDash.
Most important, Daleo said, is the data connecting those interactions.
DoorDash has invested in understanding how its CPG advertising products work together, not merely to produce an immediate sale but to generate longer-term value for brands.
For advertisers, that’s the larger promise of commerce media. It isn’t simply knowing that someone saw an ad. It’s getting closer to knowing what happened afterward.
And sometimes what happened afterward was ice cream at 10 p.m. No judgment. The data has already seen everything.
CANNES, France — Consumer packaged goods marketers have spent decades figuring out who their customers are. DoorDash would also like them to consider a more immediate question: What are those customers doing right now, and do they urgently need cough medicine or a pint of ice cream?
Katie Daleo, general manager of consumer packaged goods ads at DoorDash, said commerce media is increasingly moving beyond demographic targeting to focus on the occasions and intentions that drive purchases.
In an interview with Beet.TV contributor David Kaplan at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, Daleo described how DoorDash is using its purchase data, advertising formats and artificial intelligence to help brands reach consumers closer to the moment they decide to buy something.
The moment may matter as much as the demographic
Daleo, who came from a brand-management background, said traditional audience segmentation remains important. Brands still need to understand whom they serve, how people use their products and what job those products perform.
“I don’t think that ever goes away, right?” Daleo said. “That’s very much like the soul of a brand.”
But a commerce platform can see another valuable signal: what someone is trying to accomplish at a particular moment.
DoorDash has 56 million monthly active users, Daleo said. A brand’s traditional demographic target might represent only a fraction of those consumers, even though plenty of people outside that group could still buy its products.
That makes purchase intent especially useful. A parent looking for over-the-counter medicine when a child wakes up sick at 3 a.m. presents one kind of occasion. Someone hunting for ice cream at 10 p.m. presents another, presumably less medically urgent one.
DoorDash wants advertisers to understand those moments alongside demographics and consumer profiles. The company continues to invest in behavioral targeting while helping brands study how customers find their products and move toward a purchase.
Think globally, sell ice cream locally
Kaplan asked how global brands can balance scale with local relevance across DoorDash, Wolt and Deliveroo.
Daleo said the answer begins with finding consumer behaviors that cross borders.
“Kids wake up at 3 AM with fevers in the US as well as France,” she said. “People like ice cream at 10 PM, you know, regardless of where you live.”
Human civilization may have its differences, but apparently late-night dessert cravings are one of the remaining pillars of international unity.
“The execution needs to be local,” Daleo said, citing creative, messaging and media mix.
Brands tend to lean more heavily into lower-funnel advertising in the U.S., while using more upper- and mid-funnel tactics overseas, she said. The challenge is to find a common consumer truth that can support a global strategy while adapting the execution to individual markets.
AI gets a job cleaning up the complexity
No advertising conversation at Cannes would be complete without asking about AI, possibly under penalty of losing one’s festival credentials.
“Awesome, can’t get away that question on AI,” Daleo joked when Kaplan raised the subject.
For DoorDash, however, the practical application is fairly straightforward.
“AI needs to strip out that complexity,” Daleo said.
That complexity is considerable. Brands may be managing hundreds of campaigns across DoorDash and other platforms. DoorDash offers auto bidding for sponsored-product campaigns, allowing advertisers to turn over some optimization work to the platform.
But advertisers don’t necessarily want an algorithm handed the car keys without knowing where it plans to drive.
Daleo said brands asked for more visibility into how campaigns were being optimized. DoorDash responded by adding controls including minimum return-on-ad-spend targets and the ability to optimize for clicks or sales.
The company has taken a similar approach with Smart Campaigns for restaurants, which personalize promotional offers based on which ones are expected to perform best.
Daleo said there’s plenty of interest in AI among advertising partners, but also “a little bit of skepticism or unease.” That means automation needs to simplify campaign management without stripping marketers of the control they still want.
Commerce media moves up the funnel
Kaplan also asked why delivery platforms, which were originally built to move products, increasingly are being discussed alongside premium media properties.
Daleo pointed to three factors: audiences, advertising formats and data.
DoorDash’s 56 million monthly active users give advertisers significant reach. More than half are DashPass subscribers, Daleo said, and those customers make purchases on the platform about nine or 10 times a month.
The company also offers formats designed to reach consumers at multiple stages of the purchase journey, from advertising on the DoorDash homepage and store pages through post-checkout opportunities on DoubleDash.
Most important, Daleo said, is the data connecting those interactions.
DoorDash has invested in understanding how its CPG advertising products work together, not merely to produce an immediate sale but to generate longer-term value for brands.
For advertisers, that’s the larger promise of commerce media. It isn’t simply knowing that someone saw an ad. It’s getting closer to knowing what happened afterward.
And sometimes what happened afterward was ice cream at 10 p.m. No judgment. The data has already seen everything.
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