Following the success of our first eCommerce campaign in 2022, we launched two campaigns to reach consumers through digital advertising on the shopping platform Instacart in 2023.
Instacart allows customers to shop for groceries from their preferred local grocery stores from the comfort of their home. Once the order is placed, a personal shopper is assigned to collect and deliver the order on the same day. Instacart has partnered with over 1,400 national, regional, and independent retailers across over 14,000 cities. This amounts to more than 80,000 retail stores available on Instacart’s platform.
The impact of modern tools like Instacart is significant. According to the platform, milk is one of the top three items shoppers purchase, and more than 182 million gallons of milk have been bought through Instacart since its inception in 2012.
As of 2023, approximately 600,000 shoppers in the United States and Canada use the platform, with 66 percent being women, 60 percent being younger than 34, and 50 percent being parents. These demographics align well with the target audience for our overall dairy promotion efforts, making advertising on Instacart the right fit. The cost savings made possible through Dairy Management Inc.’s (DMI) partnership allowed us to maximize our investment.
Our goal for both 2023 advertising campaigns was to promote dairy products by targeting consumers according to their purchase behavior and keyword searches to drive awareness, traffic, and sales. We tracked impressions (the number of times someone saw one of our ads), clicks on the ads, and units of product sold after someone clicked an ad. Regarding sales, we look at the value of direct sales made by clicks on the ads, immediate purchases, and attributed sales, or those made within 30 days.
The first campaign ran from the end of May into June and targeted shoppers using the keywords “grilling” and “cheese.” These ads led to $31,000 in direct sales and $87,000 in attributed sales. That equates to $3.08 in sales for every dollar spent on advertising.
We cast a wider net with the second campaign. This one, focusing on fluid milk, ran during the holiday season (from the end of November through December) and targeted shoppers using the keywords “cereal,” “cookies,” and “smoothies.” This campaign led to $270,000 in direct sales and another $276,00 in attributed sales. This time, the return on our investment was $13.50 in sales for every dollar spent on advertising.
By the end of 2023, we saw more than $300,000 in direct sales and $363,000 in attributed sales. Additionally, shoppers saw our ads more than 475,000 times throughout the year. Advertising on Instacart proved successful in 2023, and we’ll continue to expand our dairy promotion efforts there in 2024.