Meredith Digital began integrating Grocery Server?s technology in April 2014, with early campaigns for brands such as Target, Unilever and Del Monte focused on native placements across desktop, tablet and mobile. Grocery Server?s platform enables marketers to deliver relevant offers in real-time to mobile users, with these initial efforts reportedly driving a lift in sales, increasing basket size and driving marketers? return on investment. 

?Over half of our audience at Meredith is coming to us from mobile devices today, so everything we do moving forward has to contemplate mobile,? said Marc Rothschild, senior vice president of Meredith Digital. ?On Allrecipes, our flagship food site and first site where the Grocery Server technology is implemented, we are well over 1 billion visits a year, 70 percent of which are on mobile device.  

?Importantly, approximately 50 percent of consumers who visit Allrecipes from their phone purchase groceries within 24 hours of that visit, 42 percent that same day,? he said. ?For millennials, those percentages go up to 55 percent and 49 percent respectively. 

?This acquisition now enables our mobile consumers, as they compile their shopping lists they are about to go buy, to understand which ingredients from which brands are on sale at which retailer in close proximity to them. That is a pretty powerful end to end solution for our consumers and our brands.?

The deal will enable Meredith to boost its position in the food and CPG spaces by offering marketers a digital shopper marketing platform enabling them to suggest products that are related to a recipe users on Meredith?s mobile sites are looking at or for products that are complementary. 

For example, if a consumer is searching Allrecipes.com for a meal that is considered messy, such as sloppy joes, the Grocery Server technology will suggest paper towels on sale at a designated retailer in close proximity.  

?Traditionally, our CPG and retail partners have utilized us to create content and digital assets that explain to our mobile consumers why they should use specific CPG product or shop at a particular retailer, ? Mr. Rothschild said. ?Now we can tell our consumers how they can use those products and from which retailer they can go to buy those products on sale, in real time, at the very moment they are looking.? 

Grocery Server developed its technology in response to the quickly shifting behaviors of mobile-equipped, value-minded shoppers. A significant percentage of mobile shoppers are using their devices to make more informed purchase decisions in the aisle. According to Allrecipes? 2015 Digital Grocery Shopping Behaviors survey, 75 percent of smartphone-equipped grocery shoppers add items to their cart because of loyalty savings while 77 percent do so because they need it for a recipe. 

The Grocery Server platform combines hyperlocal targeting with a network of CPG brands and grocery retail outlets to target consumers with time-sensitive, relevant product offers at the exact moment they are developing weekly shopping lists and navigating grocery aisles.

Once the deal is completed, Grocery Server?s co-founders will Lead Meredith?s shopper marketing business. 

Brands participating in Meredith Shopper Marketing programs gain access to proprietary, real-time category and product-specific shopper insights and shopper research directly tying shopper marketing promotion to lift in store sales by retailer.

Meredith has been quickly scaling up on mobile as its audience tends toward heavy users. Meredith claims to reach more than 100 million American women and more than 60 percent of millennial women in the United States. 

The company also recently acquired Selectable Media, MyWedding.com and SHAPE as part of a strategic initiative to drive digital and cross-platform growth through branded experiences.

The company also has a licensing agreement with Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia to operate MarthaStewart.com, Marthastewartweddings.com and the Martha Stewart video content library.

?As our consumers are preparing their ingredient list on their device, a CPG partner can be front and center highlighting that that consumer should use their brand for a particular ingredient,? Mr. Rothschild said.  

Chantal Tode is senior editor on Mobile Marketer, New York