Instacart debuts its new ‘brand pages’ feature

The most notable new offering unveiled by Instacart today is called ‘brand pages,’ which the company describes as “a curated, shoppable destination where the consumer can explore the brand’s product portfolio from their favorite retailers.”

If Instacart is the digital equivalent of a massive grocery store, then its new brand pages can be likened to large rooms within that store that have been partitioned off from one another in order to exclusively house products from specific brands. This is quite unlike the experience of walking through an ordinary grocery store, where products are organized not by brand but by type. It’s unlikely that any grocery store in America has a specific Ben & Jerry’s room, for example, which only contains Ben & Jerry’s ice cream. But with brand pages, Instacart shoppers can now be directed to the digital equivalent of the ‘Ben & Jerry’s room,’ which is replete with that company’s branding.

This presents new advertising opportunities for brands. “Brand pages are free to create and give advertisers the flexibility to customize layouts, create product collections and bring their brand’s evergreen and seasonal storytelling to life with rich imagery and text,” the company says.

Though the rise of social media has made it easier for brands to engage with consumers, that engagement does not always drive sales. “CPGs have choices to make as to where to direct those consumers for deeper engagement – more and more, CPG brands want to send the customers they’re engaging with on their broad-reach platforms, like a social platform, to an experience that is tied into a point of sale, so that the customer can interact with the brand and then make a purchase right away: a shoppable landing page,” says Ryan Mayward, vice-president of ad sales at Instacart. “That’s really the need that we’re filling with brand pages.”

Instacart has also unveiled a suite of additional display ad products intended “to complement brand pages.” These are auction-based ads, which can be curated by brands to target consumers according to purchase behavior or keyword. They will appear at various points throughout the Instacart shopping experience.

A number of CPG brands – including Ben & Jerry’s, Breyers, Kidfresh, Klondike, Milton’s Craft Bakers, Talenti and Tillamook – have already begun to use the new products from Instacart Ads, according to the company.

The new offerings from Instacart Ads will also increase the likelihood that shoppers will discover new brands while they’re shopping on Instacart. “The thing about marketplaces is that they’re largely demand-driven. So, the consumer comes to them knowing what they want to buy, rather than coming to them to learn about new brands, new flavors, new products,” says Travis Johnson, chief executive officer of Podean. Major online retailers like Instacart, says Johnson, “have recognized that and are trying to build more opportunities for consumers to discover, rather than just buy. This [new offering from Instacart] appears to be an initiative aimed at increasing the size of the basket that people are placing with Instacart by introducing them to new things they might like.”

Instacart currently partners with more than 700 retail brands, delivering from over 65,000 stores across North America. Deliveries via the Instacart platform are currently available to roughly 85% of all homes in the US and 90% of all homes in Canada. The company currently partners with more than 4,000 CPG brands.

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