Millennial, Gen-X & B2B Opps: Instacart promotes CMO amid significant spend increases (Score 73)
Instacart promoted 
Laura Jones to CMO, effective July 2022. Jones joined the company as brand and marketing VP in June 2021 and was most recently its head of marketing. Since her hire, Jones has reportedly led initiatives to reinvent Instacart's brand, launch its first integrated brand campaign, build an in-house creative studio, develop a full-funnel in-house media team, debut a social-first integrated Super Bowl campaign, and more recently, launch a new brand marketing campaign promoting the launch of Instacart+. The expansion of Jones's role will likely lead to similar strategy shifts, so we may see higher spend and/or agency reviews as a result.
Since the beginning of 2022, iSpot reports Instacart has allocated roughly $14.6m on national TV commercials. By this point last year, the company had not yet utilized this channel, and it has already surpassed its estimated full-year 2021 spend of $11.9m by 23%. It did not utilize this channel in 2020. Instacart's 2022 commercials have targeted Gen-X watching shows such as Dr. Phil, Snapped, Good Morning America, The Golden Girls and Beat Bobby Flay.
According to Pathmatics, the grocery delivery service has spent approximately $16.6m on digital ads YTD, 27% more than the approximately $13.1m spent within the same 2021 timeframe. Instacart ended up spending approximately $29.9m on digital ads in 2021, 68% more than the approximately $17.8m spent in 2020. So far this year, the company has earned ~1.6b digital impressions via desktop video (52%), Facebook (28%), Instagram (9%), desktop display (9%) and mobile display (1%) ads. Most of this year's desktop video ads have been placed site direct onto destinations such as youtube.com (13%), brainly.com, cnn.com, weather.com and fandom.com.
Instacart tends to primarily target millennials and Gen-X and secondarily target Gen-Z. However, it's also been reinforcing its B2B initiatives to reach more retail partners that might benefit from its delivery services (more here). Sellers should contact soon to offer high-ROI strategies among millennials and Gen-X, along with high-ROI B2B strategies. Sellers should reach out soon to secure some of Instacart's increasing ad dollars; spend shows no sign of slowing down anytime soon.
Agency & martech readers - Promoted CMOs don't always conduct agency reviews as often as outside hires, but it certainly wouldn't hurt to get in touch. Instacart handles creative and media in-house, but it also works with outside agencies such as Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, which provides additional creative assistance.
