Instacart's Ali Miller and Tim Castelli - Live from Cannes Lions 2026

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hello from Ken. I'm Allie Miller, the general manager of advertising at Instacart.

SPEAKER_02 0:04

And I'm Tim Castelli, VP of Global Advertising, and we're with the CPG Guys.

PVSB 0:10

Hello and welcome to the CPG Guys Podcast, set at the intersection of commerce and tech. Your hosts, Shri Raja Gopelin and Peter V. S. Bond, explore how brands and retailers engage consumers in a digitally driven world. And now, here are the CPG guys.

SPEAKER_05 0:30

Hello and welcome to this episode of the CPG Guys Podcast. Of course, Shri, your West Coast co-host, and also CRO co-founder at ThinkBlue Consulting, your trusted partner on your Omnichannel Journey, where you can get in touch with me at Shri at thinkblueconsulting.co. Please do listen to my younger daughter, Laura Gentle Bank Catzai, who have now announced a full tour in the fall of Europe in the U.S. This time it's arenas. So I hope you're able to get a ticket indeed. And I'm joined today by my East Coast co-host and co-founder, Mr. PVSP, who also moonlights the head of industry and client engagement at Flywheel, the Commerce Acceleration Division of Omnicon. Peter, here in France, we're hosting breakfast, lunch, dinners, happy hours, panels, so much more parties, whatnot. But this is a fun one we're getting ready to do here. And it's in AC.

SPEAKER_04 1:16

I am I know the uh climate control condition. I have a lot of stuff because you talk about this concertor and I can't get a ticket, Shri. Like, we what good are you to me if I can't get a ticket? Live nation. I know. You're not fun. I am having a good time, Shri. I got here yesterday. You put me right to work. I was like stalking the uh wonderful uh colon uh snap and go coolers that they sent us to display at the CBG guys La Résidence. And we host it, we host an event. We get tomorrow, tonight we've got a happy hour. Tomorrow we've got a whole slew of schedules coming together. It finishes off. We're gonna do a little happy hour with the women in commerce media, one of our one of our favorite groups with uh Anna Laura and uh Emma. But all's good here. It's great to be great to be in Cannes for our I think this is our fourth time together.

SPEAKER_05 2:01

Sure. Indeed. So let me thank all our listeners and our sponsors. Without you, this podcast doesn't exist, of course. Thank you. Make sure you're subscribing to our podcast on your preferred listening platform, we can get the latest episodes and even go back and consume some of the 600 plus episodes we want to publish. Congrats. Episode 600, of course, was Stony Doggers, the CMO of Dollar General. We had a full C-suite lineup to it, including 599, which is the CEO of Noel Grants, Chris Peterson himself with a fabulous conversation on AI. So we're gonna jump into our conversation with our guests, Ali and Tim. I don't know who they are, so we're gonna get introduced. But let me say. Having the dynamic executive engine of Instacart Live at their beachfront studio at the lame, how do I say Peter? Limits. You got that, right? Yeah, we heard it if you're gonna do it. Caroline is an absolute blockbuster event. Peter, pull up a deck chair, fire up your analytical brain. Are we on below down? Are we are we doing are we doing some Bravo TV here today? Yeah, it's move. You know what? Next year we should shoot for that. We should do that. Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_04 3:12

You should make it move, like left off a full below death. I think we need to bring that whole flavored Cornel V summer should be in.

SPEAKER_00 3:20

It would fit right in.

SPEAKER_04 3:21

I think it would up in upstate New York thing.

SPEAKER_05 3:25

So no putting up your deck chair. But you can fire up your analytical brain. Because today we're looking at how a platform went from a digital pick or app to the economic substrate of modern omnichannel grocery cards. You brought the grammar today, Sharing. Quite brained electroum. Instagram. There's a massive transformation happening right now where retail media, programmatic personalization, immediate fulfillment are colliding into a single unified loop. Marketers here can aren't just trying to figure out how to buy ad impressions or cheap reach. They're trying to figure out how to anchor their brand strategy in a dynamic marketplace that's moving in the speed of the shopper with all the volatility we have in the industry. But to help us cut through the noise and find the true commercial signal, we're joined live at the La Residence of Instacart by two absolute heavy hitters who are actively. She's the general manager of advertising at Instacart, Ali Miller, second time on the show. Yes. And he's the vice president of global advertising sales. Finally, we got Mr. Castelli himself. Welcome to the CPG guys, live here, Ken. How are you both doing? Doing great.

SPEAKER_04 5:12

Doing great.

SPEAKER_00 5:12

Thanks for having us back.

SPEAKER_04 5:14

Two in the bag, three more, you get the jacket. Oh, hey, I cannot wait. So yesterday we were doing an event with e Marketer and Sarah Marzana, who'd been on our podcast earlier this year, came on. She goes, by the way, um, I'm doing four panels today. That gets me my jacket.

SPEAKER_00 5:31

Although it's not the last thing we need here.

SPEAKER_04 5:33

No, what actually Sarah was very explicit. She's the first person who came to us and said, I like it, but I want my Varsai jacket in satin. Oh, I like to. I like that.

SPEAKER_02 5:43

So she's she's insisted when the jacket goes for her. I do have to say though, this is my second time as well. We did this one together. So you know what?

SPEAKER_04 5:53

I was supposed to say that boats repeat gets a while to have it. It is we had one RMN leader who came on and said, she said, um, where's my jacket? And I said, Well, you've only been on twice four. She goes, Well, no, I had the three people from my my company on. So I'm like, no, no, no, it doesn't count. You don't get to count too that's the road. Wherever the book is whatever, we're gonna go through it. Wow, that's a nice creative over there. I think Alan may have to do a little period.

SPEAKER_00 6:27

See the problem with uh you didn't come through here. That was great.

SPEAKER_05 6:31

Wait, you're uh you're uh karaoke singing, bro.

SPEAKER_02 6:34

No thing. Oh, yeah. That's a whole other conversation.

SPEAKER_05 6:42

I know nothing about music, so you're like, Yeah, no kidding. So thank you for making time live there and what's arguably a busy, busy schedule for all of us.

SPEAKER_00 6:51

Yeah, thank you.

SPEAKER_05 6:52

Before we jump into the Harding strategy, a quick reminder to the audience, check out the digital show notes of this episode. We've dropped the LinkedIn hyperlinks for Alientim along with Instacart's corporate platform links so you can multitask while you're listening. And by the way, while you're there on Apple or Spotify, Peter insists that you must take the five-star. Smash the five.

SPEAKER_00 7:11

Like and subscribe.

SPEAKER_05 7:12

Smash the five. That's great. That's a t-shirt.

SPEAKER_04 7:16

It's nice to five.

SPEAKER_05 7:21

Five for fighting. So Ali, we're gonna kick it off with you.

SPEAKER_01 7:26

Okay.

SPEAKER_05 7:27

Massive macro trends. That's what I'm gonna go straight out. We read Nick Modi from the latest RBC Capital report, Modi's Musings Volume 4. Theme number one. Okay, so we're officially television. Hashtag goals.

SPEAKER_01 7:42

Okay, cool.

SPEAKER_05 7:44

Oh, hashtag goals now. So Modi's Musings Volume 4's theme number one, cultural relevance is what's going to help develop brand equity. Meaning scale alone doesn't protect you anymore. You've got to turn online platforms into an active economic substrate from identity, transaction flow. How is Instacart evolving its ad tech stack to let legacy CPG giants quickly move at the speed of a viral TikTok trend or cultural moment, turning immediate social media inspiration into a converted grocery basket?

SPEAKER_00 8:20

It's something we talk about a lot, that the consumer journey, of course, is no longer this linear path. It's a completely collapsed funnel where inspiration and purchase. And it's something that we've really embraced too. So from the very beginning, we were really focused on building out the foundations of our platform. And that includes, of course, all the foundations of online grocery itself over 14 years of doing this and this business that Instacart's been around. And, you know, so that's building a strong data foundation. That's building the ability to understand what's happening across what are now 2200 retailers on our marketplace. So understanding that breadth and depth of selection, catalog hierarchies, everything that needs to come together in terms of shaping the purchase journey and shaping the groceries that are actually delivered to your door, that requires a lot of data fidelity and strong data foundations. And that supported the rise of our initial on-platform ads business. So we needed to make sure we were building those foundations. But now, especially looking at what's happened with e-commerce, it's no longer all about on-platform, right? It's about supporting the use of that powerful first-party data that we have, digital first, representing 2200 retailers, representing this incredible breadth and depth of selection across everyone from your local favorite grocer to some of the largest national and regional grocers, and allowing that to be more of a capability that CPGs can take with them and use to target, to drive purchase, and to drive closed loop measurement, importantly, really across any surface. So that includes TikTok, as you mentioned. It includes, you know, YouTube, Meta, the Trade Desk, Roku, NBC Universal, so many other places. And what I love about this is that I like to refer to kind of taking this e-commerce data out of its own little corner. It's no longer about just on-platform advertising, one specific stakeholder, one type of person who needs to care about retail media. This is now a layer or a capability that can inform all types of advertising and make that experience much more relevant and targeted to the consumer. Give them a chance to buy that item, get it delivered to their door, get that product in their hands within an hour. And it allows the CPG and agency to close the loop and understand the downstream impact of purchase. So I think we're really at this moment where commerce and discovery is really converging and resale media data is making that possible.

SPEAKER_04 10:59

You can't come to Cannes without uh a press release. Yes. So, Tim, let's talk about some news you at Instacart have announced that you can less this week. Let's start with your AI shopping assistant. Yes. What makes Instacart's AI assistant different than the rest? Oh, you're right. You have to come to Cannes with a press release or several press releases, right? I just come, I just come with the father of pop stores. That's all I got for you.

SPEAKER_02 11:23

He's always has news. Can you want me to know that is? Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 11:27

No, don't worry, Charles.

SPEAKER_02 11:29

Yeah. So it's funny. Uh I think glass can like A was kind of a buzzword. AI was kind of a buzzword as we still are. It's still a buzzword, but I think there's real, there's real substance this year. I think that's what's changed. It's like people have actually built real things using AI to add real value to their whole ecosystem, which is what we've built and we've been working on in and outs, right? So look, that's interesting. I don't know about your house, but uh a common conversation in my household, like every day, is what's for dinner? What are we making? What's going on? In fact, there was this recent Harris poll, right? Uh, three out of four Americans are more stressed about what's for dinner and more difficult deciding what's for dinner than actual making dinner, right? So that friction is what I think we can really solve uh uniquely, right? So we this year uh we've been working on it for a long time, but we announced uh Instacart's AI assistant, right? And I think what makes it different is it's not just a surface level search agent to what's for dinner, but it's the it's the depth of the machine learning infrastructure and the data behind this. I mean, we've been at this for 14 years, 1.6 billion transactions, over 100,000 storefronts, and that level of data and infrastructure, feeding that tool, I mean, it's inventory aware, based on your local retailers, it has all your preferences and its history, it knows what the household and how it shops. So it's that level of detail that I think makes us different. And it learns every transaction, every shopping experience, what they like, what they don't like, what they reject, what they buy. It refines it's constantly learning and constantly making a better customer experience, which leads to bigger baskets, which leads to better brand experiences. So that's where I think it's the un what's underneath these AI tools that feeds it, that makes it different. I think makes us different.

SPEAKER_04 13:08

So speaking as the only member of the household who cooks and the primary member of the household grocery shops, I know that while I'm here in Cannes, Instacart is a primary driver of feeding the family. It's great. Well, we're happy to have a lot of people. Yeah, thank you for your business. Anything we can do to make you look a little busier while it's I just what what are you doing? I don't know how I'm ordering it. Exactly right. Exactly right.

SPEAKER_00 13:31

As Tim said, I think one of the things too that's really helpful about this background and the data and the online grocery capabilities that we have is for brands, this means it's not a blank slate. It's based on everything that's already driving discovery on Instacart. It's based on our own individual purchase behavior that's shaping recommendations, and it's helping to support these more complex needs and these true underlying needs of consumers to be able to express, hey, I need to figure out a recipe for four that only takes 25 minutes to cook and satisfies all the dietary restrictions in my family.

SPEAKER_04 14:02

Oh my god, everyone's got their own food lifestyle. That's right. That's right.

SPEAKER_02 14:06

So it can be a real game changer. And being able to being able to do that in a much more, you know, in an easier, more intelligent and seamless way is it's a game changer.

SPEAKER_01 14:13

Yeah, yeah. So you know what?

SPEAKER_05 14:16

F now you guys are making me think because every person we meet in our corporate work life, they always tell us the same thing when we food and uh cooking comes up. They always say Instacart is if they're two working spouses or partners, they always say Instacart is my answer to get in a grocery home.

SPEAKER_02 14:35

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, and that's the whole thing. Yeah, it saves you time so you can like spend time on the other things that are more important life. It's such a convenience. Such as with your pet. Especially if you have a dog.

SPEAKER_00 14:45

I agree. Absolutely. Who also needs to eat?

SPEAKER_05 14:47

Who also needs to be debate. No debate. So another announcement that you just made is the vertical video feeds. Yes. Tell us all about the vertical video feeds, yes.

SPEAKER_00 14:56

Uh now you want to do that. Sure, I can take that one. So you mentioned up top the you know, the speed of TikTok trends, right? So we're all in our in our lives when we're not actively grocery shopping, we're browsing and enjoying content.

SPEAKER_04 15:09

I think the term is doom scroll.

SPEAKER_00 15:11

Oh, but not for food and recipe. It's it's the 20 people.

SPEAKER_04 15:15

I was talking about what they're doing. They're on other social media to make one of those.

SPEAKER_00 15:19

This is what we call a cleansing the feet.

SPEAKER_04 15:21

Yeah, we're putting people.

SPEAKER_05 15:24

Yeah, yeah, we cleaned. We can do the feet plans. That sounds good.

unknown 15:30

I don't know.

SPEAKER_05 15:31

Vertical video feeds.

SPEAKER_00 15:32

Vertical video feeds. So, yes, when you when you need to take a break from the Doom Scrolling and you want to consume amazing inspirational recipe and grocery-related content, what form does that tend to take? Vertical video. And so that idea of kind of inspirational, snackable video can now appear on Instacart. So we have this beautiful immersive feed that is really building on some of the more inspiration forward formats that we've launched over the last year or so. So, sponsored recipes, sponsored occasions. Now you can create that inspirational, shoppable content to kind of inspire outside of the aisle and kind of shape that intent of what folks might be interested in discovering and buying. And now you can pair that with vertical video.

SPEAKER_04 16:11

So when you look to engage with brands on that mechanism, do you want them to come to you with a fully baked plan? They know you're at product and just do this, or are you actually looking to them and say, no, come to us with what your problem, your problem is, and let's figure out how we solve that together?

SPEAKER_00 16:27

All of the above, I would say. Excuse me. I we we definitely want to be flexible in terms of what brands want to come in the door with. We're very excited about collaborating on big moments. So I can maybe share more about that. Um, but if there is already a vision, if there is already fantastic discovery-oriented content, content that that brands are collaborating on with creators, we think that this is an awesome opportunity to bring that to life in a way that's going to resonate with consumers on our platform. But beyond that, we're also so excited and you know being here and celebrating a lot of the marketing and advertising work behind what you know this this entire place. And we're also very excited to bring that to life for in partnership with brands. Can I say one more thing just about the immersive feed?

SPEAKER_02 17:09

I think what's great about uh the vertical video in the short form and bringing that you know inspiration into the platform. And we've been we've been slowly releasing more inspiration and formats for shopping video and then recipes and occasions, you know, cross-hell merchandising. But the video, if we can start tying inspiration into commerce, inspiration-led commerce. I mean, because what's so unique about our platform is it's a contextually relevant platform. People come there not only for the content, but they're already in the mindset of looking for food, looking for inspiration, looking for shopping. So the more you can inspire on this platform, it's gonna lead to more purchasing for more brands. So I think that's that's like just the next level of tying that into our platform, which brands are super excited about.

SPEAKER_01 17:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 17:51

I'm gonna go back to you actually just for both of you. As consumers look to collapse choice complexity because of low mental energy, rising anxiety, pricing, the visible shelf is shrinking from 50 plus items down to one or two AI created recommendations, and Tim was already going there. How does this radically compress digital real estate change how you're thinking about the ad business strategy and join business plans that you have with brands? You're aware of then you mentioned you're intentionally not running ads and AI experiences yet. Walk us through how you're thinking about in the product. Yeah. Walk us through your everyday conversations with brands. So maybe we'll kick it off with you first.

SPEAKER_00 18:32

Sure. So um absolutely. So we talked about obviously so much excitement about AI. We're very much investing. We're all in, you know, internally, in terms of tools and capabilities we're building for brands and other partners to make it easier for them to activate with Instacart behind the scenes to improve ranking and relevance and personalization on top of what we already do with machine learning, which remains very powerful and interesting, even in the in the age of generative AI. Um, but then we get to, of course, chatbots, chat-based interfaces, conversational commerce, all kinds of names for this experience. And we're so excited to be bringing this to life, as Tim mentioned, you know, leveraging that 14 plus years of grocery experience and all of the data and personalization behind that. So there's so much potential here, but we're also really early in terms of how this is taking off in the online grocery space in particular with consumers at scale. So, what I'm excited about is consumers have this ability to come to us with more complex needs, with the need behind the grocery list. Like, I need to figure out what to make for dinner, I need to figure out which personal care products are right for me, whatever it may be. And we have a really powerful way to help drive that kind of research and discovery, recipe, occasion basket building. But we still need to figure out what's really resonating at scale with consumers. And having been in ads for a long time, both of us, it's how do you make sure that ads are resonating with consumers? Well, you build them on top of a consumer experience that you understand. And so this early stage of rolling out and expanding our card assistant or our AI, our AI assistant on Instacart to millions of consumers, we're going to be getting so much fantastic feedback. So, feedback at scale on what consumers are actually asking, when they come back, when they don't come back, what are they, what are they finding value in, in addition to qualitative feedback that we hear. And so that's going to really set the foundation for ads experiences that feel natural, that feel useful, that feel additive, and will actually add value to consumers and brands alike. And so that's really what we're looking forward to is um, you know, towards the second half of this year, we'll be building experimentation, we'll be looking at what resonates, and we'll be using that to kind of develop our ad strategy in these new surfaces. So I know we will get there and you know, we're already building these inspirational ad formats. We have sponsored recipes, we have great basket building content, we have promotions and deals that brands are leaning into. These are things that I expect will resonate with consumers in a sponsored context when they're using our our uh our AI assistant, but um, we want to make sure that it's really ready, ready to start rolling that out. So that's really how we're thinking about it.

SPEAKER_02 21:08

Like Ali said to the INL part when you're sitting in GDP. Well, no, like Ali said it. Well, like we we're if anybody has uh sitting here and we are podcasting, they've got this figured out on the uh the ad experience, I think they're they're lying. So so which look we we the the the way is optimistic. Well, uh sorry, optimistic, yeah, maybe a little naive, right? So uh so the uh so look one of the things I love about working here is it's a very consumer-led company, right? It's always has been. Even from the way we look at the marketplace, we don't care where our consumers shop as long as they're buying our brands in whatever channel they're buying, right? And the consumer has to lead the way. That's how you build a durable platform, a durable company, a durable proposition. If you just jump to assumptions that the advertising is going to interact, and consumers are gonna interact with ads in the same way, the way we've been doing it, that may not be the right assumption. So we're gonna We're gonna learn, we're gonna just along the way, we'll let the consumer lead the way. What is the right experience? And then integrate an organic brand experience into that because that's gonna be good for all things. So brands accept that. They don't want us to jump too far, they're patient with us, and we'll bring them along for the journey with us as well, which will be great.

SPEAKER_00 22:17

That test and learn mentality is gonna be really key for literally everybody working in the system team right now.

SPEAKER_04 22:22

So let's double-click on the immersive feed uh component. It feels like to some degree it's been of a bit of a direct response to how people are actually engaging in social media, right? Yeah. So I guess my question is how do you make sure that the experience feels additive and not just another ad unit? And does this foreshadow more to come with media publishers and creators from your perspective?

SPEAKER_02 22:46

Yeah, I mean, I look like I think Dr. I can then we'll go you know, add on to it. So I think you know, consumers are used to scrolling or getting inspiration from a different place in their feeds and video, et cetera. Uh all we're doing is trying to again try to compress that uh from inspiration to transaction and make that easier and seamless. So I think we're gonna learn here as well. So we're piloting it right now. You know, can we make that inspiration, make it you know, in a contextually relevant place, and it's shoppable and it's instantly measurable. I'm excited to work with brands to see, okay, which content is actually driving the behavior that they think it's driving, which one are they is purchasing, which one is then adding to lifetime value. We're we're guessing a lot of that by trying to connect different platforms here in one place. If you can you know look at that different content and follow it all the way through, I think we're gonna learn a lot with brands along the way.

SPEAKER_00 23:37

Absolutely. And I say, you know, in the context of just making sure we're not adding just another ad unit, I think a lot of this comes into the type of content that we're promoting, the what we think will resonate with each individual as a consumer based on past purchases or interest in different categories. And we really, you know, with every single thing we launch on Instacart, we'd make sure that we run lots of A-B tests, we understand the impact on the consumer experience, on the brand experience, and really kind of tying it together with the approach we just talked about with our AI assistant, we're really trying to build in the direction of value. And what we see is, of course, vertical video content, especially when you think of recipes and when you think of demonstrations of how to use products, it's so natural and it's so resonant to a consumer. So the ability to just have that information in context and quickly add those items to your cart is going to be really, really simple. And then when you further look out at you know, where we're doing these integrations with platforms like TikTok and Meta, it helps to really bring that whole story together. Like this is exactly the behavior that we can help to drive when you are on a more kind of discovery-oriented inspiration forward platform, which can also benefit from tying to that purchase and giving the consumer that choice to add something to their cart on Instacart. And now we're kind of bringing that full circle, bringing it back on the platform.

SPEAKER_04 24:49

I I absolutely think that the contextual aspect of it is going to dramatically improve the shopping experience.

SPEAKER_01 24:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 24:55

I've always said one of the reasons I had historically avoided shopping online for events like Fourth of July. Yeah. Was it experience fishing? And this is for every experience fishing. I just want to say, what's the third party for my friends in the Sky Gardens? Exactly. And I want the I want the uh the the uh the platform to come back to me and tell me, maybe ask me a couple questions in return. Yeah, you've got to include three people come. And then go, here's what, here's your how many people, here's what you need and the right quantity. That's right.

SPEAKER_02 25:24

And and again, it's it's that contextual relevance and it's that mindset of the consumer and the mode they're in while they're there, right? Right, and what they're looking for. And if you can start using AI to think like you're thinking in holistically, and I just need that, or inspire using contextually relevant content, you know, whether the brands bring it, whether we eventually get to create content and start tying that, all of that just makes it a richer experience and more relevant.

SPEAKER_04 25:47

And Ali, are you seeing it play out more where actually in the number of characters that are appearing in your search term are starting to grow as people are getting comfortable with contextually conversing with ranges?

SPEAKER_00 25:58

We've definitely seen some of that. And this, you know, even dates back to some of the conversational search and generative AI enhanced search that we we were piloting over the last couple years. So, you know, we've been at this for a little while, like learning what's resonating with consumers. And definitely, I mean, we've been all trained to have very specific search terms, very narrow search terms that will help us get exactly what we're looking for. But yes, as people get more used to um working in conversational interfaces, we're demanding a little bit more of our search engines. And I think as you see that kind of popping up across the industry, in grocery or not, or beyond e-commerce, a lot of that can be reflected on our platform. And um just to give a shout out to all the non-food CPGs, I think one of the things I love about this sort of occasion-based shopping is hey, I'm doing a summer grill. What do I need in addition to the meat and the condiments and the buns and everything? That's right. You need your bug spray, you need your lighter fluid, you know, the sunscreen, exactly. So it's it's it's really helpful to kind of tie together this idea of truly authentically useful basket building that that helps to kind of touch every part of the aisle.

SPEAKER_04 27:00

Yeah, my daughter came to me the other day and knew she was from the northeast when it was sunny outside, and she walked up with a tube of uh sunscreen and said, Daddy, would you smear me?

SPEAKER_01 27:12

Yeah, that's really that accountability.

SPEAKER_05 27:17

This one's for you and it adds to view.

SPEAKER_01 27:20

Yes, another press release.

SPEAKER_05 27:21

Yeah, essentially the way we see it, you're opening up Instacart's own marketing engine as and partners. Yes. What made you confident enough that that internal capability of yours, you're actually to turn it into a commercial offering?

SPEAKER_01 27:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 27:37

So so we've been at this for a little bit, right? In fact, uh Laura Jones, our CMO, is fantastic. She's built an incredible marketing team, an incredible marketing machine. And in fact, uh our in-house agency, Local Produce, just won ad-age uh number one in-house agency that year, right? So best in the last unbelievable, right? Uh so and we've been so we thought, hey, look, we should be tapping into this creative engine and all of the knowledge we have of our consumers and all of we have knowledge of our brands to like work together to to elevate uh and and accomplish the marketing goals as well. So so we've and we've already been started doing this. There's about 200 brands, we've done probably about 400 uh different campaigns, and we see we see great results. So when brands integrate into our moments, our seasonal moments, we're seeing like 80, 90 percent new to brand impressions bringing into the fold. So probably the biggest example of this was two years ago at Super Bowl, where we had all of our brands uh delivering the groceries as part of our Super Bowl commercials. We leaned hard into a lot of the ancillary content with that. So I think it's it's bringing that expertise to help brands and whether it's we're leaning into our seasonal moments or things we're doing, or we're actually creating bespoke creative campaigns, offering that capability. That's what our brains are looking for. So it's really using us for not just the performance, yes, but the full funnel capabilities and how we can add value. And the great thing too is then all of this is underpinned by this rich first-party data to help inform the full funnel uh based on what's online, what's off-platform, and all closed loop measurement to drive performance. So it really is from a marketer standpoint, uh, and you know, the brands that are really getting us are starting to look at us that way. I think we could be much more than just a lower fellow solution.

SPEAKER_05 29:18

No debate. But let me remind the audience of speaking with Ali Miller and Tim Castelli from Instacart, and we're live at Cannes in France. Over to you, Peter.

SPEAKER_04 29:28

Uh let's talk about new revenue streams and business models. Yes. CBG brands, Tim, are desperately trying to evolve from old school unit-driven transaction models towards ecosystem-based monetization. With Instacart caper cards rolling out, smart screens right into the physical brick and mortar aisles. You guys have built a literal physical digital loop. Yes. Right? How should brands rethink co-created real-time physical store experiences using your connected hardware?

SPEAKER_02 29:58

We're super excited about what's going on in store with caber. So, first of all, and you guys know this, like in-stores uh will continue to be is a massive opportunity, right?

SPEAKER_04 30:08

As fast as e-commerce is. Even if people are cutting their cables and then maybe not watching cable TV the way they used to, they're still.

SPEAKER_02 30:18

So having a strong offering or finding a way to tie these two worlds together in store and online, is really the beauty of Caper. So we bought this company, invested in CaperCart, and it's it's on fire right now. We have like 3x deployments where in 100 cities across 15 states and growing. And your ability to develop uh a relationship, say, you know, bring everything you love about the digital uh space uh into that personalization, into physical space, know where that shopper is in store and be deliver an ad or an offering. We're seeing people who use capers have build bigger baskets, uh, spend more time in stores. Uh the retailers like it, uh, consumers love it. So it's it's really been a unique part of our uh our offering. And brands love it too, because now they're starting to look at it. How can you tie physical and online together? And it's just opening up a whole new area of conversations and opportunities.

SPEAKER_00 31:09

And importantly, it's one of the only in-store touch points where you can fully close the loop on the individual transaction basket because you're building a relevant.

SPEAKER_04 31:19

Yeah, you're actually personalized.

SPEAKER_00 31:23

As Tim said, it really is bringing the best of e-congress kind of back to where it all started in the I think.

SPEAKER_02 31:27

So this behavior already happens. Like so, so Shakaima tells us even if you're exposed to an ad on Instagram but didn't buy, you're showing up 15 to 20 percent increase of buying those per those products in store, just an exposure. So these things are already happening. It's just how can we get more and more signals that time together and more touch points for consumers? Yeah, multi-function attribution. You have to understand it's partly part of the area. Back to what you said, it's like consumers look at it holistically. You know, we just look at it in silos and budgets of those tips.

SPEAKER_00 31:56

Yeah, it's almost like we can break down those silos and look at those.

SPEAKER_05 32:00

Look at those. So I guess we're starting to deeper dive into the physical aisle, which we would call as the ultimate frontier. Ali, we can't be here at Cairn Lines without talking about our favorite word, closed loop measurement. Three words. Maybe one was hyphenated. Hyphenated, yeah. I mean, we took too much credit way too early for good English. Marketers are completely burned out on self-attributed platform metrics. Oh, yeah. Instacart's value proposition is anchored on receipt level, purchase, verified, deterministic truth. So for the brand marketers listening work out in the validation trap, what does mathematically clean, independent attribution look like over the next few years? And then how do you actually enforce it?

SPEAKER_00 32:42

Yeah, this is so huge for us. And we were we were talking about kind of the incredible rise, of course, of e-commerce and online grocery. And with that came this incredible number of retail media networks and this fragmentation of the space, where, to your point, many different attribution methodologies, many different buying interfaces, varying degrees of kind of quality and trust around what those metrics are showing. And so kind of going back to the roots of what Instacart does uniquely well is everything is digital by nature. So not only do we have the receipt, we have the actual basket building details. We have how did a consumer actually build the basket? We have um, you know, substitution preferences that they might be expressing to us if a product may not be in stock. They have um, you know, all kinds of you know, true competitive sets that they're essentially inferring to us based on what they're searching and what they're choosing from. So the level of fidelity that we have on this data is pretty incredible. And so that leads to a really strong measurement foundation. But of course, it's not enough for us to say it. We have really leaned into third-party partnerships and validation and verification. And we were really proud to be one of the first retail media networks that was accredited by the MRC. And so that's a very, very, very, very, very detailed auditing uh process to make sure that you know our core metrics are validated and trustworthy. And then, as Tim was talking about, you know, we've worked with Circana and others to really prove out impact as well. And then the thing that I'm really excited about is that as part of our model of offering our ads technology to other, to retailers or other e-commerce players in the space, we can take that strong foundation of measurement, that optimization that's powered by it, that accreditation and that trust, and we can offer that technology to retailers. So they don't need to invest in what it takes to kind of bring all of this online at a level of fidelity and trust and expertise that obviously takes a lot of time and energy and money to build. And, you know, grocers may not want to invest in all of that end-to-end, but by working with us through our Caratots partnerships, they can gain access to all of that technology ready to go. And at the same time, we can help to then defragment and kind of simplify this retail media ecosystem by making it easier for brands and agencies to buy through Instacart ads, show up across the 2200 retailers on our marketplace and the over 310 partners that are using our Carat solutions.

SPEAKER_04 35:08

We've talked about all these great innovative capabilities, but at the end of the day, Tim, I know you understand this. If it's not moving volume off the shelf, physical or digital, it's just noise. So the question to you is what's separating the brands that are actually moving the numbers from those that are running the same 20-year-old playbook? Yeah. No, we've I think we've talked about this before, right?

SPEAKER_02 35:27

I know it's like, you know, so I said a couple things. Uh, and I've always, you know, when I when I'm relatively new, I've been here about three years, and I was I was surprised by the silos and the level of the silos uh that exist in this part, in traditionally in the retail space, about budgets here and channel hit trades here and partners here versus no family. The marketing setting was always about an audience, right? And like we're an audience-first, consumer-first platform, right? We didn't exist 14 years ago. Uh, we look at it that way. We all look at it in silos. It doesn't matter where he or she buys, it's that she buys. So I think the best in class uh where I see moving where organizations are breaking down those silos and looking at it more holistically, it's one dollar trying to drive an outcome. So being in the meetings with not only the chief commercial officer, but with the CMO as well, looking at holistically, and you get enterprise commitment to e-commerce is important. So that's really best in class. So look across holistically, prioritize it as a priority channel for growth, right? And then this mindset of being willing to test and learn and try the new things. Not everything's gonna work, but you have to have that mindset because we haven't all figured this all out. Like we were talking about in the AI space. So be curious and see what works and then try and scale it from there. And I think that's where you get best in class in this marketplace right now.

SPEAKER_05 36:49

Tim, what are we gonna do, man? We can no longer call you the media guy. You enter the detailed one, fully immersive. Proud, proud, proud card family members. Welcome, welcome in the good to be here. So let me let me wrap this one up. Conversation for both of you. So thank you for the provocative insights, getting into measurement in a pretty deep way and what you're building on the platform. Before we back up and head out back onto a beautiful sunny walk on the crosshead. So this place especially is very notoriously famous for the birthplace of massive landscape shifting partnership announcements, enterprise platform reveals. Ollie Tim, this is only day two. Day two. So this means what do you want to start cooking up under the hood for Instagram that you can have? That you can uniquely share with the CPG guys community like today.

SPEAKER_00 37:41

Yeah, let's share that confidential. Um I mean, I would say, you know what, I'm looking forward to a couple things. We talked a lot about being sort of early innings, early days on conversational commerce. And so it is no secret, yet we you know still have a lot to figure out in terms of what the ad experiences are gonna be here. And so for me, when I look ahead to the next six months, understanding what's working for consumers, understanding how to meet brands in terms of what they need, that to me is gonna be a really exciting next step that we're gonna test and learn together. And then similarly, as we continue to expand this ecosystem approach that we're taking, really looking forward to simplifying the fragmented landscape of retail media. We are not done there. There's definitely gonna be more news on the horizon. So I'm really excited about continuing to expand.

SPEAKER_02 38:27

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like Ali said, I think you'll continue to play that role to simplify this complicated marketplace. Uh, we're gonna continue to test and learn in the I space together with brands. Uh, and then you'll continue to see us uh act more like an omnichannel, full funnel partner to the CPGs that really get it, really lean in and look at not look at us not only just performance, but mid and full funnel and using our data to wrap it all together in a closely measurement way. So I think that's that's the path you'll continue to see us on. He is full retail though. Oh, we're funneling.

SPEAKER_00 39:01

But omnichannel.

SPEAKER_05 39:03

You're still holding on no voice. Not coming over to the store only void, huh? Oh, give me time, give me time. It's all right. It's already good. Let me remind the listeners you can find all of our content by simply going to a web browser, type in cpg guys.com as the URL. If you or someone you know something to contribute to this ongoing discussion with CPG Guys, please reach out to us. Pretty straightforward. Drop us an email at reach us at cpg guys.com. That's R-E-A-C-H-U-S at cpgguys.com to our audience. I want to say thank you for the likes, flakes, comments, direct messages, meeting us at trade shows, coming to our events. Thank you for fighting into our DMs. We like to do that.

SPEAKER_01 39:37

Oh, no, MySpace DMs.

SPEAKER_05 39:40

That's what Peter likes. Thank you for recording episodes with us like we've done today, and to our sponsors. Always grateful to you. The show doesn't exist without all of you. You work with us all year. We're grateful to have you as the audience, partners. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Uh Peter, it's been a pleasure doing this with you. Give me the big takeaway today.

SPEAKER_04 40:00

Uh that they're building out a platform that enhances and complements customer experiences, plain and simple, right? They're adapting. They see how consumers are behaving, and they are building a platform that that makes it very intuitive and very natural for brands to be able to engage consumers.

SPEAKER_05 40:17

My big takeaway, Tim has plunged into the joined the dark side. Thank you, Peter. History in the making, guys. Lots of great announcements right here at Cannes. Looking forward to the next few months playing out as well and what you have cooking under the factory. Thank you both, Ali and Tim, for taking time out of your hyper busy CAN schedule to drop this masterclass with us live here. And to our audience, check out the digital show notes, click the hyperlinks, follow Instacart's ongoing ad product rollouts. Thank you guys. Thank you so much. Yeah. Yeah. Here we go. That's all we have for you today. See you soon in another episode of the CPG guys.