Online grocery retailer, Instacart, has said it plans to introduce a new way for brands to advertise in-store via its AI-powered smart carts.
Instacart will begin piloting ads on Caper Carts at Good Food Holdings banner stores with a focus on bringing personalised and dynamic recommendations into the physical aisles of the grocery store, the company said.
A key benefit of ads on Caper Carts will be its ability to enable customers to discover new brands and products as they shop. According to the firm, customers spend, on average, more than 30 minutes shopping in-store with a Caper Cart. The first-of-a-kind advertising means that customers using Caper Carts at participating retailers will soon experience two new features, Instacart said.
How it works
First, the Caper Cart home screen will show customers new products and brands, deals, at the start of the shopping journey. Then, it will show personalised product recommendations based on their real-time shopping behaviour or cart contents. For example, if a customer adds ice cream cones, they might see a complementary item recommendation, like Dreyer’s ice cream. Launch partners of the initiative include Del Monte Foods, Dreyer’s Grand Ice Cream, and General Mills.
“Our acquisition of Caper has been a core part of our strategic evolution to support retailers and brands not just online but also in-store,” said Fidji Simo, CEO and Chair of Instacart.
“It was one of the first major decisions I made as CEO of the company as we launched our Connected Stores technologies, and today we’re excited to introduce the next phase of this work with a new advertising solution that will further enable thousands of CPG brands to connect with high-intent customers with measurable results — in all the ways people choose to shop,” he added.
The new ads on Caper Carts offering is launching soon at Good Food Holdings’ Bristol Farms stores in Southern California, with plans for additional retail partners to roll out the feature over the next few months.
Source: Instacart
Building on Carrot Ads technology
The announcement builds on Instacart’s Carrot Ads technology, which enables retailers to establish and grow retail media networks on their owned and operated websites and apps – powered by Instacart Ads technology. The feature allows retail partners to leveraging the best of Instacart Ads, including the company’s technology, products, engineering, sales talent, and data insights.
Over the last year, Instacart has extended its off-platform advertising capabilities to Roku and The Trade Desk, which are all rooted in enhancing CPG brands’ advertising with the company’s retail media data. Caper Carts, part of Instacart’s Connected Stores suite of technologies, have been built to help grocers bridge the online and in-store shopping experience. By using computer vision and AI, the cart can automatically identify items as they are placed in the basket, allowing customers to bag as they shop and checkout directly from the cart.
