Hello, welcome back to NRA and the Retail Podcast Interviews
with Actually, a brand that I've wanted to interview for a long
time. I'm joined by Alice's Head of
Strategy. Market strategy?
Market strategy. That was only the 4th time that
I've tried to do that. But so Alex, so those who don't
know because you, you are a North American place.
Yeah. And in some really cool grocers
like Wegmans, who Rezar, well, the pets, everything.
I think they're just amazing. It's like, well, you imagine the
future of grocery to be all around discovery.
In my mind, there's like, that's where a grocery felt anyway,
going off topic. So tell me about Infragard, tell
me about what you do Instagram, and let's take it from there.
In terms of the history lesson, where else where we all started
off when we started working with our advertisers is our app.
And so again, when you think about it advertisers objectives,
what they're really trying to do is find their consumer that
actually likes their products and move products off the
shelves. And so it was very interesting
for advertisers to work with us and invest in the Instacart ad
network because what you're basically essentially able to do
is log into the ad platform and say, look, I have some business
objectives that want to do. I want to either find new
customers or I want to grow my basket sizes or move more sales.
And we're able to do that through different ad formats
across our network. And so that's historically has
always been on our marketplace. Where we've taken it the last
few years is actually through our solutions because we're
constantly part of the retailers to think about how do we drive
digital transformation in your stores.
Yeah, well, every time we do that, we actually create new
advertising opportunities. Wow.
And so the last few years we've been partnering with our
retailers to create their own media channels.
And so you'll hear us talk a lot about Carrot ads, which is our
retailers option to create their own retail media network.
Control was what? Why would I do that?
Profitability, right? Well, so I can charge more of a
premium for my network. So, yeah, So basically, I think
that if you look at the industry today, yeah, most of what the
retailers are talking about is, look, is it really worth it for
me to actually spend the time and invest in creating a retail
media network? It seems like it's limited to
only the big players because at the end of the day and you don't
have the audience, then will the advertiser really come, right.
And So what we're able to do is actually none of the playing
field a little bit for both the the retailers, but also allow
our advertisers to reach all different channels to meet new
audiences. And So what we're doing is that
same network that our 5500 grammes is already investing in.
We're extending all those ad formats into our retailers own
channels. Yeah.
And did you get any numbers on the amount of cross sell
conversion up? So is that like something you
track or can the retainer track though?
Absolutely. I think that's.
Absolutely. A lot of people.
I think, I think what we're so excited about is that, look,
it's not like advertising is new to retailers.
They've been doing it for me just.
But what's always been challenging from that
relationship is advertisers saying, look, I have to go to my
CFO, is this campaign working? And often traditional print or
traditional way, the advertising is really tough to measure,
incrementality. And so when you do a digital
retail, media network of this, you could get measurement very
quickly, almost real time. You're able to understand who's
buying your products and you'll reach your consumers a lot
better. You could target them.
And so yeah, absolutely. No, fantastic.
Wait, what's your vision of the future?
Actually, 2 two final questions from being here for the last
three days. What's been the one question
when people come to you? What?
What's the number one thing at top of mind for them?
And then give me sort of like a a vision of the future.
Yeah, I often get asked, is it really worth it for me to spend
my dollars in my resources to build a retail media network,
Right. And I think the biggest thing
that we could tell them is yes, if you get through the cold
start problem, meaning as long as you're able to get the
advertisers to participate and that's what really we're we're
here to do with helping our progress, helping source demand
for them be part of our network And so they're able to actually
get over that objection there. So we're excited about that.
And your second question is about vision.
Look, I think that groceries are really exciting space right now.
And really the number one reason for that is because even though
it's an age-old practise getting your groceries, what's unique
about groceries that you have multiple touch points with your
customer in a week. Compare that to other
industries, you may see them three times a year, 6 * a year.
Yeah. Groceries you can see up to two
to three times a week. Yeah.
So think actually from an advertiser perspective, think
about how much you know about your customer that is so
fantastic from advertisers lens. And so I think what retailers
really have in their hands is a pool of data in a pool of
opportunity to partner with the advertisers and to really help
monetize their surfaces who Dr profitability.
Alice absolutely wonderful. Thank.
You so much. Thank you so much.