Ali Miller, Vice President of Product Management, Ads at Instacart, shares her expertise on the cutting-edge integration of AI in grocery shopping. She discusses how Instacart's four-sided marketplace benefits consumers, brands, and retailers. Ali elaborates on the evolution of their advertising tools, highlighting new features like shoppable video formats and the ChatGPT plugin. She offers insights for emerging brands on optimizing their presence and leveraging personalization through AI, paving the way for a smarter shopping experience.
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insights INSIGHT
Four-Sided Marketplace Advantage
Instacart is a four-sided marketplace connecting consumers, retailers, brands, and shoppers into one commerce loop.
Aligned incentives let ads directly drive transactions because users come with high purchase intent.
insights INSIGHT
Ads Built Around Measurable Sales
Instacart began with sponsored products and expanded into measurement like sales lift and A/B testing.
Optimized bidding and first-party measurement reveal true incremental value to advertisers.
We’re hearing a lot about AI, artificial intelligence these days, especially with the release to the public of Chat GPT, which may of you have been experimenting with. Chat GPT can help with brainstorming, writing, coding, and more - definitely check out the free version if you haven’t yet. When I first saw the demo of Chat GPT that used Instacart’s plug-in in a recent TED talk (which I’ve linked in the show notes) and it generated a shopping list based on a prompt for a dinner party, my first thought was, “How do emerging brands fit into this picture when AI helps us shop?” How can our community stay informed about how AI is involved in shopper choices and take advantage of the opportunities available now and going to be available? Because Instacart is on the forefront of using AI in grocery and because they are the leading grocery technology company in North America, I decided to reach out to them. Lucky for us, Ali Miller, their Vice President of Product Management, Ads, was willing to come on the show! As you’ll hear, I’ve been personally using Instacart since 2018 and love the platform and have dug into their ads platform, 3rd party tools, and their new AI features from the Chat GPT plug-in to the new Ask Instacart. I think this episode is packed with really powerful knowledge from Ali about how Instacart works and opportunities available for emerging brands to tap into this technology. Instacart partners with more than 1,200 national, regional, and local retail banners, which is approximately 80,000 stores in North America through their marketplace and nearly 6,000 brands use Instacart Ads to connect with consumers.
Listen in as Ali shares about:
How Instacart’s 4-sided marketplace works
How the platform has evolved in the last couple of years especially with ML, machine learning, and AI, artificial intelligence
How Instacart is partnering with Chat GPT both as a plug-in and to power “Ask Instacart” and ways consumers are using these features
Opportunities for emerging brands to keep their data up to date within the Instacart platform and use Instacart Ads to get great digital listings (despite physical shelf placement)
How Instacart Ads automates and optimizes the process to your goals and how you can use Instacart to support retail launches
How Instacart’s customer service balances using AI and traditional customer service methods
What Instacart is working on next, how quickly the platform is evolving, and the excitement on what’s ahead
Brands mentioned: Liquid Death, New Seasons Market
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