SAN FRANCISCO — In a move poised to accelerate the maturity of retail media on the open internet, Instacart and The Trade Desk have announced an expanded partnership that gives advertisers unprecedented control over campaign precision, speed, and measurement.
For the first time, advertisers can build custom self-serve Instacart audiences directly within The Trade Desk platform, leveraging real-time retail signals related to specific product attributes across Instacart’s expansive grocery catalog. This functionality enables marketers to activate Instacart’s first-party data at scale, mid-flight, and across omnichannel environments, including CTV, audio, and display, without relying on insertion orders.
The partnership also brings closed-loop measurement from Instacart into The Trade Desk interface, allowing brands to track attributed sales and return on ad spend (ROAS) in real time. This offers advertisers more actionable insight into the performance of off-site campaigns and enables in-flight optimization with deterministic, SKU-level data.
“With this partnership expansion, we’re making it even easier for advertisers to integrate valuable Instacart purchase signals into their media buys,” said Ali Miller, Vice President of Ads Product, at Instacart. “We’ve been excited to see how brands have already used Instacart data in The Trade Desk platform to drive incremental reach and new-to-brand purchases. We’re now taking this a step further to make audience creation and closed-loop measurement truly seamless. Brands can now move faster to drive valuable results connected to actual sales with precision and scale.”
The announcement reflects a broader industry push to bring retail media data out of walled gardens and into the open web. With more than 7,000 active brands and 1,800 retail partners, Instacart continues to differentiate with its multi-surface approach, powering media both on-platform and across partners like Google, Meta, Roku, and now The Trade Desk.
“Instacart is setting the standard for how retail media data can be activated at scale,” said Jeff Daniel, GM of Retail Data Partnerships, The Trade Desk. “By integrating Instacart’s deterministic purchase-based data and closed-loop measurement directly into our Kokai platform, we’re empowering advertisers to drive real business outcomes with precision, speed, and transparency – all while maintaining control over their media investments. This is a powerful example of how close collaboration and technology integrations embrace the open internet to unlock smarter, more precise advertising.
Early adopters are already realizing the benefits. Flywheel, an Omnicom agency, has been leveraging the new Conversion API to fine-tune audience strategies and track off-site media performance. “We jumped at the opportunity to test out the Conversion API between Instacart and The Trade Desk because we knew it would help answer two critical questions we get from brands regularly; is my offsite media working, and can I make it work harder?” said Drew Habeck, SVP, Media, Flywheel. “The ability to leverage Instacart data across offsite inventory via The Trade Desk allows Flywheel to manage and optimize campaigns more efficiently and be more tailored with our audience strategy. On top of that, the closed-loop reporting provides clear sales impact, helping our clients inform their media investment decisions with a greater degree of confidence.”
Danone also piloted the integration to support its Silk “Feel Planty Good” campaign, enabling real-time asset optimization and off-site measurement. “Danone leveraged the Instacart beta with The Trade Desk to optimize Silk’s “Feel Planty Good” OLV campaign assets in real time,” said Jennifer Madison, Senior Manager, Plant-Based Media, Danone. “The new functionality from Instacart has made it easier to optimize Silk’s offsite retail audience-powered activation, and provide closed-loop measurement.”
As retail media continues to evolve, the Instacart–Trade Desk collaboration stands as a model for how platforms can bridge the gap between online and in-store behavior and unlock new efficiencies in digital ad spending.
