Leveraging Retail Media Shoppable Ads

A smaller CPG brand aimed to compete against household names and carve out market share. The brand needed to achieve an ambitious monthly return on ad spend (ROAS) target for Instacart, contributing to its annual revenue goal.

The CPG brand targeted people actively searching for competitor brands, intercepting potential customers at critical decision-making moments. The brand leveraged Instacart's shoppable display ads, featuring engaging lifestyle images and a product carousel for frictionless shopping. After identifying that competitor keyword targeting outperformed behavioral audience targeting, the brand isolated this approach into its own campaign for precise budget control and highlighted its unique selling points, emphasizing premium ingredients and rigorous quality standards directly alongside competitor products.

The campaign exceeded expectations, demonstrating the power of targeted retail media for smaller brands. The CPG brand saw growth in both overall audience-specific sales and campaign sales. The ROAS improvement surpassed the original goal, validating the effectiveness of the competitor targeting strategy. This success led the CPG brand to allocate additional budget to competitor targeting and apply these insights across other retail media networks. These results proved smaller brands can effectively challenge industry giants through strategic retail media investment.