Instacart, a prominent grocery technology company in North America, has announced an expanded partnership with The Trade Desk, a global leader in advertising technology. This collaboration aims to enhance programmatic campaign performance on the open internet by integrating Instacart’s retail media data with The Trade Desk platform.
This partnership marks Instacart as the first U.S. retail media network to combine its grocery selection with The Trade Desk for streamlined self-service use cases. Approved advertisers and agencies can now create first-party custom audiences based on specific product criteria for their campaigns. Additionally, consumer packaged goods (CPG) brands will have access to real-time sales measurement signals from Instacart directly within The Trade Desk platform.
The integration allows advertisers to better leverage retail media data for understanding and optimizing the impact of their campaign spending on actual consumer actions. Historically, advertisers have used high-value audience segments from Instacart within The Trade Desk platform to reach consumers across channels such as CTV, audio, video, and display efficiently.
Now, approved brands can build custom Instacart audiences or utilize pre-made segments across various categories like alcohol and beauty products mid-campaign without insertion orders (IOs). This functionality maintains control over frequency caps, brand safety controls, data privacy compliance, and direct publisher pricing via The Trade Desk’s Kokai platform.
Advertisers can measure how these audience segments drive business outcomes more effectively. Partners like Omnicom’s Flywheel can leverage closed-loop measurement from Instacart in all campaigns through The Trade Desk platform. This visibility facilitates real-time optimization and enhanced performance across omnichannel campaigns.
The collaboration is part of Instacart’s expanding advertising ecosystem that integrates retail media data into various platforms where consumers make shopping decisions. These include the Instacart Marketplace, over 220 grocery e-commerce sites, in-store Caper Carts, and partnerships with companies like Google, Meta, NBCUniversal, Roku, among others.
