There is a lot going on in the grocery industry both positive and negative—from discussions on tariffs to soaring egg prices. However, grocery brands that have been keen on investing in the fast-growing retail media space may have one less thing to worry about.
Turns out Thrive Market isn’t burdening grocery sellers with yet another tech stack to plug into for advertising. When it comes to retail media, Thrive Market has done a couple of things differently than others. The online grocer chose to partner with Instacart instead of building its own retail media tech stack.
The rationale behind not building a standalone offering was to integrate with a provider like Instacart, where grocery brands were already spending their money, April Lane, chief merchandising officer of Thrive Market, told Retail Brew.
“There’s so many retail media networks out there, and frankly, for brands, it’s really hard to manage all of the different networks,” Lane said. “It was really table stakes for us that we’re not going to build something that’s completely standalone, where a brand needs to learn yet another system and optimize their ad dollars separately from other channels.”
Lane expects Thrive Market to double its month over month ad revenue, given that more than 25% of brands have already begun investing in the company’s ad business. Thrive Market sells close to 750 brands on-site and has more than 1.6 million paying members. Lane sat down with Retail Brew and talked us through Thrive’s retail media approach.
This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Talk to me about the elimination process. Why did Thrive Market choose Instacart?
We looked at Instacart, we looked at Criteo, we looked at PromoteIQ…I went to a few smaller players that…fell off the list quickly. But it really came down to two things really—it was brand preference. The brands are the ones using these platforms day in, day out to buy advertising. They need to love it, and they need to be using it. So we did a bunch of overlap analysis. We looked at, “OK, here are the brands we carry: Who’s working with whom? What’s the investment in sales resources behind that set of brands?” So we really wanted to make sure there was, I would say, commercial viability.
Retail news that keeps industry pros in the know
Retail Brew delivers the latest retail industry news and insights surrounding marketing, DTC, and e-commerce to keep leaders and decision-makers up to date.
And then the second piece of it was really, who’s investing in developing unique ad products? That, to us, is really important. We didn’t want to just only have a set of me-too offerings.
We needed to find someone who was willing to think creatively about those problems with us, and who would prioritize us in that space. Instacart rose to the top of the list because they’re so focused on grocery. They understand this space better than most of the other players that have a much broader aperture.
What are you most excited about with your retail media plan this year?
I’m really excited to get display, shoppable display, and shoppable video [ads] up. Shoppable video ad placements will be the first time we’ve had video on our site. I’m incredibly excited to see how that drives member behavior and how the storytelling element of it changes the game. I think a lot of our brands have really cool stories to tell, and I think it’ll be an incredible format for them. So I’m excited for us about expanding ad formats. I think that’s going to be the name of the game for us this year in the industry.
For brands, what pain points are you trying to solve for?
The brands I’m talking to are always concerned about how [to] prove incrementality. How do they know that these ads are truly driving new revenue, and they’re not just paying for revenue they would have already had?
Incrementality is No. 1, and then No. 2, they’re looking for consistency across the formats. Right now, everyone has their own forms of measurement. It’s really hard to compare apples to apples. When you look at the metrics that are published, they’re all slightly different. I think brands are really looking for that kind of throughline that allows them to compare and be consistent.