Instacart Advertising: Drive Brand Loyalty with Non-Search Ad Placements
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4 min

Instacart Advertising: Drive Brand Loyalty with Non-Search Ad Placements

Ellie Edwards, June 23, 2021

Building customer loyalty is key to an effective long-term eCommerce strategy and Instacart advertising is no different. While it's important to focus on strategies to gain new customers, it's equally, if not more important for brands to think about how they are going to keep those customers.

Instacart's Non-Search ad placements encourage repeat-buys, presenting the ideal opportunity for advertisers to increase market share and gain brand loyalty among customers who have already purchased their products.

Non-Search Ad Placements and Targeting

There are two main classifications where Featured Product ads can appear on Instacart: Search and Non-Search. While placements for search are achieved through keyword bidding, Non-Search placements are controlled by a "default bid" which applies at the ad group level on Instacart's native ad console.

Many advertisers are well in tune with their keyword strategy for Instacart, however they have yet to capitalize on Instacart's Non-Search placements. Some advertisers may not even realize they're spending on Non-Search, given that performance for these placements is not explicitly displayed within Instacart's ad console.

Non-Search placements include all Featured Product (FP) placements outside the search results page on Instacart. There are five locations where Non-Search ads can appear:

  1. Home Page as "You May Like"

  2. Buy It Again / Your Items: Featured in a list of previously purchased items, customized by retailer and user

  3. Department / Aisle pages

  4. Item Detail Page: Featured on the product detail page of similar or related items

  5. Post-Checkout as "last minute additions"

At Perpetua, we have seen Non-Search contribute to almost 50% total ad spend and attributed sales - meaning there is a significant opportunity for advertisers to better capitalize on these browse ad placements.
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The Importance of Non-Search and Customer Loyalty

One of the most powerful components of Non-Search advertising is its ability to increase brand loyalty by retargeting customers who have previously purchased your brand's products. The Buy It Again and Post-Checkout placements in particular, target customers that have previously purchased your brand's products but not yet added these items to their latest basket.

After a customer's 10th purchase on the Instacart marketplace, up to 25% of items are purchased directly from Buy It Again. This list can become very long over time and includes both organic and featured listings. By targeting Non-Search placements more aggressively, you increase the likelihood that your brand's products will appear at the top of a customer's Buy It Again list, maximizing the potential for repeat buyers and increased market share.

Perpetua's Solution: Non-Search Isolation

Perpetua is excited to announce the launch of Non-Search Isolation segments for Instacart advertising. Non-Search Isolation will allow our customers exclusive control over browse vs. keyword targeting with full visibility into reporting for each segment. By turning on Non-Search Isolation, users can set a distinct budget and Target ROAS for Non-Search placements exclusively.

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Regardless of whether Non-Search Isolation is turned on, all Perpetua users will have full visibility into Non-Search performance by viewing the Non-Search target within their Instacart goals. This Non-Search reporting is exclusive to brands using Perpetua, as Non-Search performance still requires manual calculation through Instacart's native console.

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For support on how to setup Non-Search Isolation, please refer to our help article here or reach out to your assigned Account Manager at Perpetua.

To get started or learn more about how Perpetua can help you scale your Amazon Advertising business