CANNES, LIONS — When retail media first landed at Cannes Lions, it made for a bit of an odd fit — an unshowy, lower-funnel channel encroaching on the festival celebrating bold creative ideas.
As the annual gathering’s tech focus has only become more pronounced — and arguably reached a fresh peak this year — retail media networks have further extended into the upper funnel, broadening their vision beyond sponsored search and display ads into channels like video and even branded entertainment.
“Leaning into the opportunity to connect commerce and creative, this is the place to do that,” said Ali Miller, general manager of advertising at Instacart, in an interview at Cannes last week.
Instacart, a grocery delivery platform that works with over 2,200 retailers, at Cannes Lions dropped a round of product news underscoring the desire to push further beyond performance channels into more full-funnel marketing, including through a new Ads Studio. The studio invites brands to collaborate on Instacart’s campaigns and specific cultural moments, building on efforts like a Super Bowl push from last year that featured cameos from an array of CPG mascots. Brainstorming, execution and measurement will be supported by Instacart’s first-party data, bringing the company’s retail media arm closer to its decorated in-house agency Local Produce.
“We’re really hoping to get in conversations with brands before they even have fully arrived at a concept,” said Miller. “Let us ideate and come up with great concepts together that can be activated throughout the year.”
Another new offering is an Immersive Feed for short-form vertical video within the Instacart app. The experience is not dissimilar to what one would find on TikTok, but with brands supplying videos that last between five and 30 seconds. Hellmann's, Kettle & Fire, Rachael Ray Nutrish and Siete Foods are piloting the format, which is aimed at driving discovery and transactions through recipe and product recommendation videos that feature add-to-cart capabilities. Instacart plans to expand the feed into organic content through partnerships and sponsored creator integrations.
“When you think about recipe content, product demonstrations, personal care content, beauty content — vertical video is the perfect format for this,” said Miller, adding that the “sky’s the limit” for Immersive Feed.
Vision for AI advertising
In addition, Instacart at Cannes Lions laid out its vision for an artificial intelligence-powered shopping assistant that is positioned to help users solve problems like coming up with gluten-free meal ideas for a family of four. Miller said that Instacart will “likely” start to experiment with ads in the program later in the second half of this year. Still, the executive noted that Instacart is taking a deliberate approach to an ads rollout, factoring in user feedback rather than rushing to monetize. Instacart grew ad revenue 16% year over year to $286 million in Q1.
“We really want to make sure that it's a two-way street,” said Miller of AI.
Where the assistant will sit within Instacart’s advertising mix is an open question. Other AI platforms beginning to run ads have similarly taken a TBD position regarding their ultimate place in the marketing funnel. Sponsored recipes and occasions — think drawing up a shopping list for a barbecue on the latter — surfacing deals and offers and promoting product exploration were some of the potential use cases floated by Miller.
“We’re going to see what ends up being the dominant behavior that consumers turn to AI for. My hypothesis is that we are going to be able to see more of this upper funnel, kind of mid-funnel-y behavior,” said Miller. “I think it can help to ... move a little more up-funnel and drive a little bit more of that discovery behavior.”
