Dive Brief:

• Uber will integrate Instacart’s Carrot Ads platform into its own advertising system in the U.S. in a bid to provide a range of capabilities across its Uber Eats offering for CPG advertisers of all sizes, per a company announcement. 
• CPG advertisers will be able to create sponsored product campaigns across the Uber Eats grocery and retail marketplace through Instacart Ads Manager access. Advertisers will also be able to evaluate campaigns using Instacart’s Carrot Ads performance and measurement capabilities.
• Delivery services continue to ramp up platform advertising opportunities as they look to drive revenue in a competitive category by monetizing their customer data. Last month, DoorDash introduced new advertising features designed to attract CPG and retail advertisers to its Double Dash feature.

Dive Insight:

The Instacart integration will enhance Uber Advertising’s offering through a Shoppable Display format and other performance marketing engagement tools, supporting the ride-hailing company’s efforts to reach a broad range of CPG marketers. 

“Our advertising team already works with many of the world’s largest brands directly, but we want to be there for brands of all sizes to help them easily reach our engaged audience in a way that suits them,” said Travis Colvin, general manager of grocery and retail at Uber Advertising, in a statement. “For the US market, we believe this integration best achieves that goal.”

Uber late last year appointed Kristi Argyilan as global head of its burgeoning advertising business, enlisting an executive who helped build retail media networks at companies like Albertsons and Target. Argyilan has been tasked with introducing new ad formats and broadening the advertiser pool for the segment. Uber delivered a 20% revenue jump in Q4 2024, for a total of $12 billion. Its advertising business was track to surpass $1 billion in revenue in 2024. 

Instacart’s Carrot Ads supports more than 7,000 brands while more than 220 retail banners use the solution for their retail media businesses and to run ads on e-commerce sites. Instacart’s Q4 revenue totaled $883 million, missing analysts expectations and dragging down the company’s stock value.

Uber and Instacart have been cozying up to one another for a while, which was evident in a collaborative feature launched last year that enables Instacart users to order restaurant delivery through Uber Eats via a Restaurants tab on the former’s app. A deeper relationship adds fuel to the fire that Uber and Instacart are moving closer to a merger, an idea floated by an analyst last year. In such a scenario, both companies would stand to gain by accessing new lines of potential customers and customer data.