Dive Brief:
- DoorDash is broadening the scope of its commerce media business with new ad formats, offsite advertising muscle and a partnership with data-collaboration platform LiveRamp, according to a press release.
- The LiveRamp tie-up centers on clean rooms that match DoorDash’s data with that of the advertiser to realize more incremental reach and impact. A CPG leader that tested the capability with four of its brands found almost all of the customers reached through sponsored product campaigns were new to the business.
- DoorDash is also rolling out a premium homepage ad placement called Spotlight that uses visual-driven storytelling to engage consumers right when they open the app, an approach that saw two-times higher click-through rates versus banner ads in early testing. These moves show DoorDash focusing on greater variety and campaign precision to stand out in the increasingly crowded commerce media category.
Dive Insight:
DoorDash Ads’ suite of announcements are part of a larger effort to position the business as a commerce media platform with global scale that can cater to both restaurants — a historic focus for the delivery platform operator — and CPG advertisers that have propelled the larger retail media boom. Across the DoorDash, Wolt and Deliveroo properties, DoorDash Ads now wields an advertiser base of over 400,000 and more than $5 billion in annualized advertising and promotional spend, the company said in a blog post.
“Every order starts with an occasion — a Friday night, a birthday, a last-minute grocery run. We’ve built a platform around those moments, and now we can help businesses of every size reach consumers in them and measure what’s working,” said Toby Espinosa, vice president of ads at DoorDash, in a press statement.
One of the flashier products unveiled are Spotlight ads that command a large share of the screen when opening DoorDash. The display and video-focused format is intended to showcase new products, highlight seasonal menu items and generate interest in limited-time offers, and can be paired with more promotional tactics like buy one, get one free deals to drive transactions.
To demonstrate it can help brand partners reach new customers, DoorDash Ads is also teaming with ad-tech firm LiveRamp on areas such as audience overlap analysis, custom segmentation and activation. LiveRamp was acquired by the agency network Publicis Groupe last month for $2.2 billion, underpinning the significant role data collaboration is playing in modern marketing strategies, including bets on artificial intelligence.
In addition to the CPG advertiser test that drove incremental reach, DoorDash and LiveRamp’s early work together has uncovered unique audiences on the platform. For example, 81% of customers engaging with a national restaurant chain on DoorDash were exclusive to the delivery platform.
Beyond activity within the DoorDash ecosystem, the commerce media unit is underscoring offsite advertising enabled by Symbiosys, an ad-tech startup it acquired for $175 million last year. Symbiosys now supports DoorDash’s onsite and offsite advertising across the Americas, Europe, the Middle East and Africa, and Asia-Pacific.
The Magnum Ice Cream Company, the ice cream company recently spun off from Unilever, was the first marketer to use Symbiosys’ full social channel suite for a campaign that leveraged first-party DoorDash data to target high-intent shoppers. The effort saw an 85% increase in new consumers.
DoorDash is also building out some of its existing ad products as well, such as AI-powered Smart Campaigns that will now support buy one, get one free promotions. Auto-bidding, another AI feature, will apply machine learning to optimize bids in real time, with the goal of realizing minimum return on ad spend targets for CPG brands. Among test campaigns DoorDash ran with auto-bidding enabled in February, more than 95% surpassed minimum ROAS threshold input by advertisers.
