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.