Advertisers Gain Real-Time Customizable Audiences and Always-On Measurement with Instacart and The Trade Desk

Rhea-AI Summary

Instacart (CART) has expanded its partnership with The Trade Desk (TTD) to enhance programmatic advertising capabilities using retail media data. As the first U.S. retail media network to integrate grocery selection with The Trade Desk platform, Instacart now enables advertisers to create custom audiences and access real-time sales measurement signals. The partnership allows CPG brands to build self-serve custom audiences, utilize ready-made segments across various categories, and measure campaign performance through closed-loop measurement including attributed sales and ROAS. The integration eliminates the need for insertion orders while maintaining brand safety controls and data privacy compliance. Notable brands like Danone have already leveraged this integration for their campaigns, with Instacart's advertising ecosystem now spanning across 7,000 active brands and 1,800 retail partners.

Positive

• First U.S. retail media network to integrate grocery selection with The Trade Desk platform for self-service use
• Enables real-time sales measurement and campaign optimization capabilities
• Eliminates need for insertion orders while maintaining brand safety controls
• Extensive reach with 7,000 active brands and 1,800 retail partners
• Provides closed-loop measurement including attributed sales and ROAS metrics

Negative

• None.

Insights

Ad Tech & Retail Media Analyst

Instacart's expanded Trade Desk partnership significantly enhances its retail media capabilities, strengthening competitive position against Amazon and Walmart.

This expanded partnership represents a significant advancement in Instacart's retail media network capabilities. By integrating with The Trade Desk's Kokai platform, Instacart becomes the first U.S. retail media network to offer self-service custom audience building based on specific product criteria for programmatic campaigns. This positions Instacart more competitively against larger retail media networks like Amazon and Walmart.

The technical integration offers three critical advantages: first-party audience customization, real-time measurement, and closed-loop attribution directly within The Trade Desk platform. This eliminates the previous friction of insertion orders while maintaining brand safety controls and data privacy compliance—crucial factors for CPG advertisers.

For Instacart, this partnership creates a more compelling value proposition for CPG brands by addressing two persistent challenges in digital advertising: audience precision and performance measurement. By enabling advertisers to connect offsite media spend with actual purchase data, Instacart strengthens its position in the rapidly growing retail media space, estimated to reach $100 billion globally by 2026.

The early adoption by major brands like Danone suggests strong market interest. This partnership expansion fits into Instacart's broader strategy of extending its retail media capabilities beyond its own marketplace to wherever consumers make purchasing decisions, including through partnerships with Google, Meta, NBCUniversal, and Roku. This omnichannel approach helps Instacart compete with larger retail media networks by offering advertisers scale and consistency across platforms.

Expanded Partnership Helps Advertisers Unlock Closed-Loop Measurement on the Open Internet with Seamless Access to Instacart Retail Data, In-Flight Optimization

SAN FRANCISCO, June 10, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- Instacart (Nasdaq: CART), the leading grocery technology company in North America, today announced an expanded partnership with The Trade Desk (Nasdaq: TTD), a global advertising technology leader, to improve programmatic campaign performance on the open internet with retail media data. Instacart is the first U.S. retail media network to integrate its grocery selection with The Trade Desk platform for streamlined self-service use cases, enabling approved advertisers and agencies to build first-party custom audiences based on specific product criteria for programmatic campaigns. CPG brands can also access real-time sales measurement signals from Instacart directly in The Trade Desk platform.

In doing so, Instacart and The Trade Desk are making it easier than ever for advertisers to leverage retail media data to understand and optimize the impact of campaign spend on the open internet and actual consumer action. 

Advertisers have historically had access to high-value, purchase-based audience segments from Instacart in The Trade Desk platform to efficiently reach the right consumer where they are, across channels like CTV, audio, video, and display. Now, approved brands can seamlessly build self-serve, custom Instacart audiences and place them into new and existing campaigns mid-flight, or add ready-made segments from Instacart across alcohol, beauty & personal care products, beverages, healthy products, and snacks, among others. This self-serve functionality eliminates the need for insertion orders (IOs), while benefiting from established features of The Trade Desk's Kokai platform, such as frequency caps, brand safety controls, data privacy compliance, and direct publisher pricing, preserving the control and experience media buyers expect from The Trade Desk.

Advertisers can now more easily measure how Instacart audience segments drive real business outcomes. Partners like Omnicom's Flywheel, leveraging data from Instacart in their campaigns, can access closed-loop measurement from Instacart across all of their campaigns, including attributed sales and return on ad spend (ROAS), directly within The Trade Desk platform. This new visibility enables media teams to see their downstream impact and allows for real-time optimization and enhanced performance across their omnichannel campaigns.

"With this partnership expansion, we're making it even easier for advertisers to integrate valuable Instacart purchase signals into their media buys," said Ali Miller, Vice President of Ads Product, at Instacart. "We've been excited to see how brands have already used Instacart data in The Trade Desk platform to drive incremental reach and new-to-brand purchases. We're now taking this a step further to make audience creation and closed-loop measurement truly seamless. Brands can now move faster to drive valuable results connected to actual sales with precision and scale."

"Instacart is setting the standard for how retail media data can be activated at scale," said Jeff Daniel, GM of Retail Data Partnerships, The Trade Desk. "By integrating Instacart's deterministic purchase-based data and closed-loop measurement directly into our Kokai platform, we're empowering advertisers to drive real business outcomes with precision, speed, and transparency – all while maintaining control over their media investments. This is a powerful example of how close collaboration and technology integrations embrace the open internet to unlock smarter, more precise advertising.

"We jumped at the opportunity to test out the Conversion API between Instacart and The Trade Desk because we knew it would help answer two critical questions we get from brands regularly; is my offsite media working, and can I make it work harder?" said Drew Habeck, SVP, Media, Flywheel. "The ability to leverage Instacart data across offsite inventory via The Trade Desk allows Flywheel to manage and optimize campaigns more efficiently and be more tailored with our audience strategy. On top of that, the closed-loop reporting provides clear sales impact, helping our clients inform their media investment decisions with a greater degree of confidence."

"Danone leveraged the Instacart beta with The Trade Desk to optimize Silk's "Feel Planty Good" OLV campaign assets in real time," said Jennifer Madison, Senior Manager, Plant-Based Media, Danone. "The new functionality from Instacart has made it easier to optimize Silk's offsite retail audience-powered activation, and provide closed-loop measurement."

This new collaboration is the latest addition to Instacart's growing advertising ecosystem, which brings its retail media data and closed-loop measurement to the places where people spend time and make shopping decisions. That includes the Instacart Marketplace, 220+ grocery e-commerce sites, in-store Caper Carts, and off-platform collaborations with partners like Google, Meta, NBCUniversal, Roku, The Trade Desk, and others.

With over 7,000 active brands and 1,800 retail partners, Instacart is helping marketers cut through fragmentation and complexity. Rather than build bespoke strategies across fragmented retail networks, advertisers can tap into Instacart's retail media data where they're already buying media—bringing consistent, high-intent targeting to platforms like streaming, search, and social discovery.

About Instacart
Instacart, the leading grocery technology company in North America, works with grocers and retailers to transform how people shop. The company partners with more than 1,800 national, regional, and local retail banners to facilitate online shopping, delivery and pickup services from nearly 100,000 stores across North America on the Instacart Marketplace. Instacart makes it possible for millions of people to get the groceries they need from the retailers they love, and for approximately 600,000 Instacart shoppers to earn by picking, packing and delivering orders on their own flexible schedule. The Instacart Platform offers retailers a suite of enterprise-grade technology products and services to power their e-commerce experiences, fulfill orders, digitize brick-and-mortar stores, provide advertising services, and glean insights. With Instacart Ads, thousands of CPG brands – from category leaders to emerging brands – partner with the company to connect directly with consumers online, right at the point of purchase. With Instacart Health, the company is providing tools to increase nutrition security, make healthy choices easier for consumers, and expand the role that food can play in improving health outcomes. For more information, visit www.instacart.com/company, and to start shopping, visit www.instacart.com. Maplebear Inc. is the registered corporate name of Instacart.

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SOURCE Instacart

FAQ

What is the new partnership between Instacart (CART) and The Trade Desk?

Instacart has expanded its partnership with The Trade Desk to enable advertisers to build custom audiences and access real-time sales measurement signals for programmatic campaigns using retail media data.

How does the Instacart and Trade Desk integration benefit advertisers?

Advertisers can now create self-serve custom audiences, access ready-made segments, and measure campaign performance through closed-loop measurement, including attributed sales and ROAS, directly within The Trade Desk platform.

How many retail partners and brands does Instacart's advertising ecosystem include?

Instacart's advertising ecosystem includes over 7,000 active brands and 1,800 retail partners.

What makes Instacart's integration with The Trade Desk unique?

Instacart is the first U.S. retail media network to integrate its grocery selection with The Trade Desk platform for streamlined self-service use cases.

What types of measurement capabilities does the Instacart-Trade Desk partnership offer?

The partnership offers closed-loop measurement capabilities including attributed sales and return on ad spend (ROAS), allowing real-time optimization and enhanced performance tracking across omnichannel campaigns.