Inspiring Product Discovery and Brand Engagement

Producer 1: A digital shelf space is not finite, you can find the right thing that's gonna resonate with the consumer at the right time, and so emerging brands have a chance to play on a level playing field, and we can provide a little bit more diversity in what consumers are able to find and discover, so I love that the digital shelf can be so much more responsive and that's an amazing ads opportunity as well as a great opportunity for consumers to discover something new.

Kailey Raymond: Hello and welcome to Good Data, Better Marketing. The Ultimate Guide to drive in customer engagement. Today's episode features an interview with Ali Miller, VP of Product Management at Instacart. But first, a word from our sponsors.

Producer 2: This podcast is brought to you by Twilio Segment, looking for clean, reliable data you can trust? Segment collects, cleans and allows you to activate your data in real time, across hundreds of applications and channels. Learn about how Segment can help you personalize customer experiences by visiting segment.com.

Kailey Raymond: Grocery ecommerce isn't going anywhere. With apps like Instacart, digital retail sales now account for 10% of the grocery category, making it a critical time for CPGs to master the digital shelf, Instacart's Ali Miller is leveraging this growth as an opportunity to create human connections. To facilitate these relationships. Instacart supports a vast assortment of brands, which enables advertisers to connect with consumers they couldn't reach before. And they're also helping consumers discover new products by uplifting diverse and emerging brands. In this episode, I sit down with Ali to discuss the power of human interaction, winning the digital shelf and creating a recipe for trust.

Kailey Raymond: I'm really excited today. I have Ali Miller here, who is the Vice President of Product Management Ads at Instacart, she has a wealth of experience at YouTube and Google for 17 or so years prior to this, and so super excited to learn from her today. Ali welcome to the show.

Ali Miller: Thank you so much for having me. It's great to be here.

Kailey Raymond: The way that I like to kick this off is just to get to know your career journey... I know I kinda give a little bit of a preamble. But in your own words, how did you get to where you are today?

Ali Miller: Yeah, so I definitely went through a sort of non-traditional path to where I am today, so in college, I majored in History.

Kailey Raymond: Okay.

Ali Miller: Which has nothing to do with online advertising, and I ended up starting at Google pretty much fresh out of college. This was in 2005, and I started supporting advertisers. That was kind of my entry level role, I was approving ads, I was troubleshooting for customers who had issues seeing their ad online, and that was my introduction to online advertising. So it didn't take me too long before I started to think, well, I would love to solve these problems for customers overall, not just one by one, over email or chat or phone.

Ali Miller: And so I weaseled my way closer and closer to product over the next few years, and then ultimately was able to become a product manager about four years into my Google career, and I feel incredibly lucky that Google was a place, especially at that time, it was very flexible, I could learn from people who had technical expertise, I could learn from people who had product and UX expertise, and over time, I just continued to follow that journey, wherever it took me, so I first worked mostly on advertiser-facing tools, helping advertisers understand.

Ali Miller: This was AdWords at the time, it's now called Google Ads, and I was helping advertisers understand performance and make edits more efficiently and all kinds of things within their kind of day-to-day work within the interface. And from there on out, continued to work on kinda broader and broader areas of the Ads organization and ultimately landed in YouTube, and so when I joined YouTube Ads, this was earlier in the ads journey for YouTube than other ads businesses were at Google.

Ali Miller: Yeah, so we were figuring out what would resonate with advertisers, what solutions do we wanna provide, what marketing objectives do we wanna support, and it was also crucially, [chuckle] as of now became my introduction really to the CPG world and the world of how CPGs who have decades and decades of experience in being expert marketers, think about budgeting, think about measuring results, think about the media mix, and so that was a real education for me in terms of that corner of the industry, and it was also a real education in getting deeper in the advertising stack. So I had worked on not just advertiser tools, but ads quality, ads formats, ranking, balancing organic YouTube engagement with ads engagement, a lot of really interesting kind of multi-sided marketplace questions, and so that really leads me exactly to where I am now, which is at Instacart so.

Ali Miller: When I joined Instacart, a little more than a year and a half ago, I was so excited to take all that expertise, so the CPG world, the multi-sided marketplace world, the ability to really define what a marketing solution should be on a platform, and then start to shape that in an area that was much earlier stage and has so much potential and also very excitingly, it has transactions that happen on the platform, so working with first party data, working with e-commerce data, that was a great enhancement of my ads expertise to date. It's been a really fun journey. I had no idea I would end up here, but I've really, really loved it. And it's been a fun ride.

Kailey Raymond: That's awesome to kind of hear how all of the different parts of your career have kind of led you to exactly where you are today. I love that you mentioned... Yeah, CPG was talking to somebody at General Mills, a couple of weeks ago, how hard it is in the industry to actually be able to calculate and measure the impact of what you're teams doing, 'cause there's so many in-betweens in the industry, it's really fascinating.

Ali Miller: Absolutely. And these products are so ubiquitous too, so it... Measuring all the touch points, and even understanding consumer behavior is already a hugely scaled, really complex problem, and so working on how to address that from the Instacart side has been really, really fun, and it feels like we're truly solving a major problem or a major challenge that CPGs have.

Kailey Raymond: That's awesome. I'm very excited to get your take on some of these trends. But before I do that, I heard a little rumor that you were on Jeopardy recently, how was that experience, I'm just curious.

Ali Miller: I was. [laughter] Yes, this was a once in a life experience I still can't believe it was real. My single Jeopardy episode, I did not win dared in February, and it was an amazing experience. The amazing thing of being part of that show is just seeing what goes on behind the scenes, so it's just this incredible crew and staff that take care of all of these nerves you've never been on TV before, [laughter] and help us feel comfortable and walk us through the process, it was amazing. And then just being on that stage, seeing the light, seeing Ken Jennings, it was just an absolutely incredible experience, so I do wish I had done better, but I lost to a data scientist, so I feel like maybe that's okay, it's like...

Kailey Raymond: Yeah.

Ali Miller: He definitely... He knew what he was doing. [laughter]

Kailey Raymond: Data versus product management in the real world.

Ali Miller: Yeah, my DS friends are never gonna let me live that down. [laughter]

Kailey Raymond: That is so funny. Such a cool experience. I've watched Jeopardy for such a long time, so I was just like, Yes, I need to ask you about this experience.

Ali Miller: Yes.

Kailey Raymond: At Jeopardy it seems like they have a very good customer experience, well I'm transitioning now back into your role in Instacart and how you and your team are part of the Customer Engagement journey, what are some of those kind of facets that your team is working on day-to-day?

Ali Miller: That was an amazing segue.

Kailey Raymond: Did you like that? [laughter] It was pretty good, right?

Ali Miller: The consumer journey on Instacart is both very complex and also a little bit simpler in the online advertising journey that I've worked through before, because what I love about Instacart is people come in with an intention, a very high intention. They wanna buy things, and when advertisers want to sell things and retailers want to sell things, and Instacart wants to drive transactions, all of our incentives are aligned and that overall drives demand for shoppers actually shop on behalf of a customer, and so all the sides of the marketplace are really moving in the same direction of driving sales and driving successful transactions and great experiences, and so it's a really interesting place to kind of work in an ad system because we're able to actually drive these authentic moments of discovery and purchase and repeat purchase and driving loyalty, driving basket building, all of those great things that CPS really care about, and so I am personally really passionate about the fact that ads don't need to be a distraction, ads don't need to be something you weigh against a consumer experience, it can be truly part of and additive to the consumer experience, of course, we don't always get that right.

Ali Miller: There are always ways to improve how we're able to best match the right ad to the right context, and we continue to work on getting better at that, but overall, I'm really proud that on Instacart, the ads really are a core part of the experience and can help consumers discover and buy products that they're gonna love.

Kailey Raymond: That's really interesting. I think that some folks might consider ads like a four-letter word in some ways, where it's like, you're really influencing me to buy it, but framing it in the way of making it a really meaningful touch point for both the consumer as well as the businesses that you're supporting and being able to tie that back directly to revenue or you found this new product that you really fell in love with and you wouldn't have found it otherwise, and making it that really meaningful part of this journey, I think is unique. Now, with what you're able to do.

Ali Miller: Yeah, it's very true, and it also really reflects the kind of coming online of the traditional in-grocery store experience, all of those shelfs, all of the brands, you see everything that's trying to inspire you to try something new, that's all, part of what is now coming on to the digital shelf and the digital shelf can be so much more personalized and dynamic, and what I love is that especially when we're looking at the breadth of brands we can support, digital shelf space is not finite. You can find the right thing that's gonna resonate with the consumer at the right time, and so emerging brands have a chance to play on a level playing field, and we can provide a little bit more diversity in what consumers are able to find and discover. So I love that the digital shelf can be so much more responsive and that's an amazing ads opportunity as well as a great opportunity for consumers to discover something new.

Kailey Raymond: I love the way that you just frame that. And I imagine partnerships are in place to be able to promote some of these more diverse businesses, 'cause you don't have a finite shelf, you don't necessarily have to stock that and spend that upfront cash, you're willing to provide a little bit more support to diverse communities. I think I was reading something about Women's History Month and the way that you are helping support women. And you did the same thing for Black History Month. Do you wanna share a little bit about that program?

Ali Miller: Yeah, absolutely. So this is the Instacart ads initiative, and so what we've done is we've partnered with emerging brands to give them a little bit of a leg up to invest in Instacart ads through a credits program, and it's something we're really excited to continue digging into and where we can help not just emerging brands, but specifically emerging brands that are founded and run by folks with under-represented backgrounds in the industry, and I love that we're able to take this approach of helping them to just get that foot in the door on the digital shelf and get a little bit more of that promotional energy going to hopefully help to drive results that are really valuable to them, sales, and then also help more customers discover them, so very excited to continue working with that and generally helping emerging brands emerge and become more successful.

Kailey Raymond: That's an incredible program, and I think it has a lot to do with something that there's been a lot of momentum in the market around over the past few years, which is ESG and making sure that we're doing well by doing good, and having that frame as a business is incredibly helpful. Not only does it help the world, it does help your bottom line as well. I'm wondering what other trends you might be seeing, and we talked a little bit about how difficult the CPG market is.

Ali Miller: Yes.

Kailey Raymond: You've mentioned personalized digital shelf a couple of times, what are some of those top trends that you're seeing related to customer experience?

Ali Miller: Yeah, absolutely. So there is definitely this trend, which you're kind of hinting at, both for CPG's and also for consumers about really paying attention to the bottom line, I mean, we are all living in the economy as it is right now.

Kailey Raymond: Sure are.

Ali Miller: And the focus for CPGs on really measuring the impact of every dollar that they're spending as much as they possibly can is incredibly important right now, they are looking wherever they can to invest dollars where it's going to drive bottom line impact, and they can understand the role and profitability and outcomes to the best extent possible, so they can use those dollars really wisely. That's something that we've invested in a lot. On the Instacart side, I talked about the power of first-party data and transactions happening on the platform, and so we've really invested in making sure that we can both drive and measure the value that we're driving for CPGs to provide insights into sales lift measurement, incrementality measurement, as well as structured AB testing, metrics like new to brand and additional insights that can help them understand where their dollars are going, so definitely on the CPG side, that focus on measurability and outcomes has always been important, but it's more important than ever right now.

Ali Miller: And then of course, on the consumer side, a ton of focus on how can I save, what are more affordable options that I can pursue and so that's also been very top of mind for us for Instacart overall absolutely. And then specifically on the ad side, we're supporting more ways for CPGs to fund promotions that both help them to drive additional basket building and loyalty from consumers but also help consumers to then get money back. So we have this stock up and save offering, for example, where if you buy a certain number of an item or a certain number of products from a brand, you can get money back and so these are examples where we're seeing that there's just so much attention and so much engagement in these types of offers right now due to the focus on really saving money where possible.

Kailey Raymond: That's really interesting. I was gonna ask where those two things interact, where there might be this tension in marketplace. I worked at Marketplace before and sometimes you feel that there's a little bit of tension on both sides but being able to find those pockets of opportunity where both people are really finding something great, some value coming from it at the same time, so I love the ability for you to highlight the dollar savings and the advertisers actually being able to perhaps get a little bit more money and have more people add more products to their carts. Very interesting, it really also sounds like... And this is something that comes up often, it is not so easy to do, especially in a market where there's a lot of third parties involved, is building trust and building trust on both sides. And so it seems as though you really have tool kits and programs in place on both sides of your marketplace to make sure that these folks are being really successful. You mentioned incrementality testing, you mentioned sales lift and so I'm wondering if you wanted to walk through some of the ways that you are making sure that folks are seeing the value and the impact that your ads are driving.

Ali Miller: Definitely, that was really top of mind for me. Honestly, the moment I entered Instacart, I was hearing questions in the industry as retail media was rising and becoming a really buzzy part of the media mix, Is this stuff really driving sales? Is it really incremental? So I worked closely with folks on our data science team and engineering team, and several others to really start digging into how incremental our sponsored product does. And I was really thrilled that our first set of tests came back looking quite positive, I wasn't sure, honestly, what we would need to do or start optimizing toward, but really our baseline was actually quite quite good. And so from there, we really kicked off a big focus area around making sure we could start generating those insights for advertisers, building trust that these are not just attributed sales, but truly incremental sales. And we ran a number of tests with CPG partners, and we've consistently seen double digit sales lift results, which was really quite strong. I believe in the team and everything, but I wasn't expecting it to be that strong. [laughter]

Kailey Raymond: You are like, I was a skeptic myself.

Ali Miller: And so it's been really awesome to see that we're being able to sustain those results and run so many great examples with advertisers, published case studies, the whole nine yards. And so we have an average sales lift to 15% on our sponsored products across the whole platform. And that's really the gold standard, that's the exposed versus hold out everything else in the world stays the same, your TV ads are running across both arms, all of that stuff, so it was really truly measuring the incremental impact of Instacart ads themselves, and so that I've seen has just been a really great driver of good conversations, deep data science to data science conversations across the CPGs team and Instacart team and just building a better dialogue around how do we actually measure true efficacy and outcomes of ads.

Kailey Raymond: And I did not know we would be living in the economic situation we're living in, but going into this and starting to see the focus as we were talking about on profitability and bottom lines, and how can we be an important part of that conversation, the incrementality testing has been a huge part of that. And so I definitely wanna continue investing there and offering these solutions more to advertisers. In addition to that, incrementality testing is, as I said, the gold standard, but it's not the best for nuance day-to-day measurement, you need a lot of signal, you need a test that runs over a set period of time, and so we supplemented that with AB testing with additional metrics and overhauling our attribution models. We started with last touch, now we're multi-touch, and we've made a lot of progress, I think in kind of engaging with what our CPGs expect to see as we're maturing as an ads platform and taking in all that feedback, figuring out where the industry is going, and figuring out where we can best provide that true understanding of value. So that goes hand-in-hand with optimizing toward that value.

Ali Miller: We've launched optimizes bidding, we're continuing to really leverage all of the signals and all that wonderful first party data, as I mentioned, to drive better outcomes and more efficient outcomes for CPGs, so all together, it feels like the recipe for trust is not just great products, it's also engaging in those transparent conversations and building those relationships with the people behind the budgets, that's also what I love about CPG, it's very personal, it's really relationship building in addition to cold hard results and reports on a screen. So it feels like that's, helped to put us in a better place and continue to build that great relationship with our partners. So I've love that and it's been a really rewarding journey to see the value actually come through in the metrics.

Kailey Raymond: That's amazing, and I love that you highlighted that this really is incredibly important at this moment that we're at. Inflation, people are looking at the money that they're spending, a lot right now, and if you're showing that double digit, that 15% for all of your advertisers, you're showing that conversion and that money spent actually pays off. That's a really really hard thing to do now and kudos to y'all for being able to actually tie back the value of the dollar spent, the ROI, which is what every single marketer is thinking about right now.

Ali Miller: Yeah. Well, thanks, I will pass on the things, and the kudos to the data science team who's been [chuckle] really the champions of this effort.

Kailey Raymond: It's awesome.

Kailey Raymond: I imagine this has been quite a journey for you and that it's been probably piece by piece, you're building blocks up to where you're getting today, and along the way you've probably identified quite a few challenges, so I wanna talk about what that looks like on your side, of Instacart.

Ali Miller: Yeah.

Kailey Raymond: What are some of those challenges that you've encountered in building this journey towards some of these best-in-class customer engagement?

Ali Miller: Yeah, so thinking back again to when I joined this team, there were a lot of great foundations in place, but the platform was still pretty young, and we were still working through, what else can we do other than sponsored products?

Ali Miller: Most retail media networks start with some version of promoted product, that's our bread and butter, we will always invest in that, but there was definitely a big question as to how could we start inching up the funnel a little bit, and how could we start inspiring some of that discovery and engagement with brands, all that stuff I talked about, we've discovering emerging brands, the digital shelf, all of that, that's not just gonna be a product that's promoted about the search results or a product that's promoted in the shopping journey. And so we were still on the mission to understand whether we could inspire that kind of engagement and discovery kind of interaction from consumers, and this aligns with what Instacart overall has been trying to do, moving from not just a transactional platform, but to a more inspirational platform. And so we needed to figure out What is ads role in that, how much can we lead that journey versus follow that journey? And so perhaps stereotypically coming from You Tube I was like, Video ads are really exciting. Let's see what we can do there.

Ali Miller: We were not sure if this would work. We were the first team to lead the charge on video, on Instacart, and so we started experimenting, seeing if consumers would even engage in video, seeing what the best set up was for this type of rich media creative, whether display or video, how can we make sure that it's still leaning into something that's authentically Instacart like driving the transaction, but also providing this kind of discovery, and so that was definitely a journey that was a lots of experiments like ads formats, experiments. You try a million versions of things before something sticks, and so we actually landed on something that ended up working really well. So we have these shoppable display and shoppable video ad units now, where you compare the rich media creative with the shoppable carousel items right below it, and we kind of hit on this framing of, you're basically shortening path from inspiration to purchase or shortening the whole journey from discovering something to immediately purchasing it, and it seems like it really was able to finally strike that balance of not pretending we're a social media platform, we're not gonna just show a bunch of videos, but we can show something that catches your eye, is inspiring, and it still drives that purchase at the end of the shopping journey, and so it was a challenge in that it wasn't clear what was going to stick, it wasn't clear what was gonna authentically resonate with consumers.

Ali Miller: And we did need to do a lot of trial and error on the right type of rich media experience, the right type of display experience, and I feel like we finally been able to hit on something, and so we launched both these products last year in the second half of the year and we've been really excited about the engagement we're seeing and the adoption we're seeing from CPGs, and there's so much more to still do to scale and optimize and continue to explore this pain, but that's something I'm both very proud of. And then also looking back, I recognize just how many iterations the team was going through to try to align on something that ultimately worked.

Kailey Raymond: I wanted to get into this because you introduced, there's a carousel of items underneath your...

Ali Miller: Yeah.

Kailey Raymond: Okay, fascinating. Carousel, being able to identify which ones you need to put in there, I wanna know how you're powering that.

Ali Miller: Yes.

Kailey Raymond: But it's like it's just some massive cross-sell opportunity, walk me through how those two things relate to each other, what algorithms and data are actually powering his recommendations.

Ali Miller: So I've got a really boring answer to your first question, because right now the advertiser chooses.

Kailey Raymond: Okay.

Ali Miller: So yes, they choose the selection of items that are eligible, and then from there, we choose the ones that we think will be most relevant and are also in stock, that's a big part of Instacart special sauces. We're able to actually show things that are gonna be available in the store that the consumer is browsing, and so yes, there are some smarts in there, There's our core Instacart parts in there, in terms of starting to make that more intelligent over time. This is very much the next stage of development so how...

Kailey Raymond: Should I be a product manager Ali? I don't know.

Ali Miller: Yes of course, I just...

Ali Miller: You have passed this product review.

Ali Miller: And so yeah, we are definitely going to be looking at how we can better drive the selection of products that are most likely to be clicked on, all of that good stuff in our sponsored products world, we are much further along there, our display products are still in their first few iterations, but in sponsored products world, we're using all the good stuff, we're looking at what's likely to be engaged with by the consumer, what's the best match for the query on the page, what's the best match for the intent that the consumer is showing throughout the various more discovery focus pages of their shopping journey, and so that is perhaps the best segue to starting to look at what generative AI can start to do for us, so every ad stack is powered on some version of machine learning and we are doing everything we can to drive the right ad for the right user at the right time, but the amazing thing about this next stage of development and what generative AI is starting to unlock for us is that can be incredibly personalized and responsive to what the consumer is actually going to engage with it can bring out themes and products that we wouldn't have discovered by ourselves instead of creating carousels, a set of carousels for sponsored products that might resonate with a given user based on signals we have.

Ali Miller: It can tell us which concepts to consider and we can actually identify products that are more inspirationally linked to each other and really sitting around a use case that we might not have up with ourselves, the engineers were talking to me about one example, like hiking snacks, probably not something we might have come up with ourselves, but it was something that thanks to large language models were able to bring out and extract that common theme across a bunch of different snacks, and then you multiply that by thousands and thousands and thousands of possibilities, if not millions of billions of possibilities, so there is so much more to do here, and I think we've gone pretty far down the road of dynamic and optimize that experiences, but there's an entirely new threshold of innovation and testing and creation that we can dig into and it's so fun to just see how excited everybody is about this, there's a lot we don't know yet about What's gonna be possible, we need to figure out the right ways to actually engage with this new set of possibilities, how consumers will engage with conversational UIs and all of these different things, but it is definitely an endless set a possibility, so we've got a lot of excited engineers on the team.

Kailey Raymond: I was talking to somebody at next door a couple of weeks ago, and they were talking about attribution and related to AI experiences with attribution, how you actually start to figure out how they heck to measure that, it's just the world is...

Ali Miller: Yeah.

Kailey Raymond: They're all changed overnight. Thank you, Sam, for doing that.

Ali Miller: Yeah.

Kailey Raymond: And everybody is now, I think, catching up.

Kailey Raymond: So you mentioned you are using machine learning, AI in your sponsor products, walk you through some of the insights or different feedback loops that you're creating to make sure that you're showing people and inspiring people leveraging some of that data, what are some of those tactics that your team has actually started to create over the past couple of years?

Ali Miller: Yeah, so the bread and butter is really... These are core ad system things, but likelihood to engage, likelihood to click, relevance to the query, making sure we're driving with our optimized bidding product, making sure that we're driving good ROI for the advertiser, so these are sort of the table stakes of a good solid ad system, the thing that I really love about what we're able to do in addition to that is start to look at relationships between the products, and so if you're browsing, for example, red meat, we can recommend just appearing with red wine, and so that's something that...

Kailey Raymond: So you're a sommelier as well. I didn't realize.

Ali Miller: Indeed. Yes. So atleast we can tell you that is our wine, I don't know if we can tell you that [laughter] it's good. Maybe...

Kailey Raymond: One day.

Ali Miller: Chat GPT would be better with that.

Ali Miller: Yes, we will get there, but chips and guacamole, chips and salsa, all of these things that we've just really intuitively about food in particular, that we're able to start looking at so we can see how all these products are related, we know how consumers are interacting across different categories and product pairings, and so we're able to generate the right ad to pair with what the consumer is browsing, and those are really powerful moments, those are very incremental moments as well. And so that's been a lot of what I find really inspiring about the potential of Instacart and what we've been able to do, and then you can extend that to beyond the food categories as well, so if you're buying laundry detergent, you might want a fabric softener, you might want stain remover, you're building regimens around these sorts of products that go together, CPGs know this inside and out, they've been working with these kind of insights and the decision trees and regimens across different product sets for a very long time, and we're able to also extract those insights and understand those insights to surface products at the right time, and that helps the ads... Again, going back to the original point about ads being an additive part of the consumer experience, those are those moments that help that feel real.

Kailey Raymond: So you've mentioned first party data multiple times, I wanna just dig into how you at Instacart define what good data is, is first party data the definition of good data? What is that? How do you use it?

Ali Miller: Yeah, so first party data is an ingredient or can be an important ingredient in high quality data, but it also needs to then be high qualities as an example, even thinking through our over-holiday attribution models as I was mentioning earlier, that was all same underlying basic capabilities of data, but we needed to do a lot of overhauling and pipelines and all of that kind of grungy work that people can be incredible experts in, and so there is a lot of just investing in Core Data Capabilities, core data infrastructure and making sure we can support the types of data that we need, so it's reliable and understandable to a CPG, we can explain the logic behind it, all of that. So the fact that it's all based on our first party data gives it this certainty. We are able to really know what is happening on our platform, we're able to use that and all these wonderful ways to optimize or measure what's actually happening on the other end. And then we still need to invest in actually being able to use it properly and make sure that it's available and reliable for CPGs. So that's a big part of it.

Ali Miller: I think the other part is being transparent around standards methodology, and we talked about building trust with incrementality data, for example, that wasn't just measure the incrementality and then push it out to the market, it was conversations, deeply digging in with data scientists on both sides to understand how the measurement was actually constructed and the tests were constructed, and so there are these elements of bringing our partners into the fold in terms of understanding and testing what we are actually trying to measure so they can then trust what's coming out the other side. So I think that's a really, really big part of it, especially when we're getting into these more advanced metrics that don't have a common definition, new to brand, lifetime value, share of voice these are all things where five different CPGs probably have 15 opinions about how these things should be measured.

Kailey Raymond: Yep.

Ali Miller: And then if you had data scientist system mix it's probably gonna be about a hundred more. So we definitely need to make sure that we have a recommendation in an opinion about how these things should be measured, but then we're bringing our partners into the conversation along with that, and then there is the question about third party and so especially in retail media, a lot of these standards are still emerging, there's not a single way to be a approved Retail media network at this point, and that's something that CPGs rightly so I think our questioning in the industry, we need to see more standards and more governance guidance, and so these are areas where the third party metrics can provide a little bit more of a neutral perspective on how platforms are measuring themselves. I tend to really appreciate and embrace the approval version of third-party metrics.

Ali Miller: I don't think third parties are going to be the best way to measure what's actually happening on another site or another app, but they can look at and approve the methodology and audit how we're doing. And so these are areas that we're starting to dip a toe into as we're maturing as an ads platform and several other retail media networks are doing similar things, but I think that's a very reasonable part of the ecosystem and is an important part of the ecosystem for a CPG who needs to then trust what's happening across all of these different platforms across all of their investments, and then ultimately the most trustworthy and the most performance is where the money is gonna go, and so that's ultimately in our interest too.

Kailey Raymond: That's so interesting. So common definitions across an industry, so intuitive and makes so much sense, but is really what's driving trust, and in one area, you have that in another area, anybody can call their first party data pretty much anything.

Ali Miller: Yeah.

Kailey Raymond: And then being able to even internally, frankly, have a common definition of what one stage of your funnel means is sometimes hard, so bringing that out into partner networks and customers and all, a big, big challenge. We've talked about quite a few tactics today in programs that you're running, I wanna learn about any other ones that you wanted to highlight that you're using some of this both blend, first party, third party to build some of those customer engagement tactics, anything you wanted to bring up?

Ali Miller: Yeah, so from a customer engagement perspective, I think one of the biggest pieces that we'll continue to invest in, going back to what I mentioned around driving inspiration and engagement beyond kind of the end part of the funnel, this is one of our biggest opportunities to continue to invest in, and as we start to look at all of these additional personalized experiences that will be able to support across the platform, I feel like we have so much opportunity to create these moments of true delight in exploration for consumers. And so I am really excited about continuing to invest in that and continuing to invest in true basket building techniques and true discovery moments using the strength of the formats that we've launched, and then continuing to iterate on those with the best time personalized promotions and all of that good stuff to ultimately construct a great basket for the customer that they're excited to receive and that they'll continue to engage with and they'll become a loyal customer over time.

Ali Miller: So I think that's a really big one. And part of that, again, going back to the measurement side of the conversation, is we need to then communicate that value in that journey back to the advertiser, so metrics like new to brand and metrics like category share and tying those insights together across the entirety of the brand's representation on Instacart is a really powerful way to tell that story, so because we're able to look across all of our retail partners, so thousand retail partners and all of North America were able to provide not just those insights into how a consumer is responding to an ad at a certain time, but how is that relating to trends and category penetration and basket building techniques across the entirety of all of our retail partners? And so this is a really important part of leaning on the strength that we have as Instacart and then finding something that authentically resonates for the consumer, and then tying it back to value for the CPG.

Kailey Raymond: But do you have any examples of programs that you run off the back of some of the data that you've been finding?

Ali Miller: Yeah, so we do find things like the order of building baskets is a really interesting insight, so when do people tend to add something like that to their basket, What's the gateway category for non-food like...

Kailey Raymond: Whoa.

Ali Miller: Paper towels go with food a little better than toilet cleaner goes with food.

Ali Miller: So these are things where you can ease people into the next stage of their basket building if we're timely about it, I won't pretend we figure this all out, this is a lot of stuff that we still need to work on and improve over time, but these are the types of insights that start to come up when we are able to dig into all of these metrics that we have, and similarly just looking at what are trends that are starting to emerge, things like non-alcoholic beer is a great example of something that has really blown up.

Kailey Raymond: Yeah.

Ali Miller: And it's something that we definitely saw emerging quickly on our platform and has become a big part of our drinks mix basically, that we're able to offer to consumers, so these are things too where we're just able to pick up on these trends as they're emerging, not just for the specific consumer journey, but overall looking across the breadth of our retail partners, so we're able to kind of figure out what might be an emerging trend or something to grab on to.

Kailey Raymond: The way that I do this, this is not gonna be helpful to you, but the way that I do this is [chuckle] I think about visually what my super market looks like, and I'm like, Here is the way that I'm building my list.

Ali Miller: Yes.

Kailey Raymond: That is the way that I do it. So I'm like VR, AR experiences.

Ali Miller: Oh, my gosh. Yes. You're describing some Hackathon projects. I have seen. I think that there are definitely people who are really interested in digging into this stuff, I feel like there are so many possibilities when you think about bringing the grocery experience online, and this is what keeps me excited is like it's not just listing all the products there are so many ways to engage in this stuff and understand how do people think and how do you tap into that moment of like, Oh yes, I also need that thing and... Yeah, so maybe it's AR, VR or maybe it's a really great app [laughter] or maybe it's a chat bot. But I think providing that level of flexibility and personalization is gonna be... It's gonna be the way this all comes together over the next year or so.

Kailey Raymond: I'm excited to see what the next steps are.

Ali Miller: Tell me what those hackathon projects end up being. I'm stoked to know what LLMs are doing with online retail. Wanna transition into inspiration, who you are looking to find pockets in your day where you're like, That person is doing it right. Maybe we could do it that way. So are there any brands or companies, even the campaigns that they're running that excite you, that you think they're doing it, right?

Ali Miller: Yeah, so this is very relevant because I just ate it for breakfast. But there's a cereal company called Magic Spoon, I don't know if you know them.

Kailey Raymond: Yep.

Ali Miller: They come to mind for me because they are such a great example of an emerging brand that's found an exact way to resonate with people like me who are super nostalgic for fruit loops, probably don't wanna eat free loops every morning, that they've been able to find a way to make these delicious cereals that are actually pretty nutritious and not a sweet and don't have tons of sugar in them, I mean, I also love sugary cereals, don't get me wrong, but on a day-to-day basis, they have found me as a customer, and I think that's a combination of their media strategy, they're packaging the way they talk about what they're doing, they're very, very savvy digital marketers, they have a great website, they have a fun tone, and so this is one that comes to mind, is just an emerging brand that's really doing it well, and they started DTC, they're getting on to grocery shelves, I can order them on Instacart on Sprouts, it's like a great way to see how an emerging brand is actually emerging and breaking into the consciousness of a consumer like me, and they have great word of mouth, it's a really interesting example of a brand where something like cereal can be executed so well, it's really quite inspiring to see what they've been able to accomplish.

Kailey Raymond: I love that example, because you clearly have a passion for being able to highlight these new brands, and you yourself have discovered this, and being able to also tie back to the emotion of nostalgia.

Ali Miller: Yeah.

Kailey Raymond: Which is an incredibly powerful thing to be able to tap into as a marketer, is a really interesting tactic.

Ali Miller: Definitely nostalgia for millennials is definitely a pretty powerful tool.

Kailey Raymond: Incredibly.

Ali Miller: Yes, yes, yes.

Kailey Raymond: Do you have a favorite database campaign?

Ali Miller: When I think about campaigns that I'm excited about, I think about campaigns that are able to marry the upper funnel to the lower funnel, and that's so hard, and that's something that we are dipping a toe into. We announced this partnership with Roku, and we're gonna help CPGs to understand impact of upper funnel Media that actually drives lower funnel impact. And you may roll your eyes at me using an Instacart example.

Kailey Raymond: No I love it.

Ali Miller: But I have really loved to see the evolution of our marketing team, so our CMO Lord Jones is a really great example of someone who understands upper funnel brand building and lower funnel performance marketing, and so we launched our first big national brand campaign with Lizzo, and it was a wonderful moment of the world is your car, it's very inspirational. It's all about shaping what Instacart can be for people, and then that's paired with extremely detailed and well-run lower funnel marketing tactics, and so the ability of the team to mature their understanding and their navigation of every part of the funnel. I am really inspired by that, and I love seeing it as an ads person, I'm able to see how they are using these tools and capabilities really, really well, and transforming the marketing capabilities of Instacart probably will just sound like I'm tooting my company's horn.

Ali Miller: I think that this is something that has been a really amazing journey for the company and something that I super respect Laura and her team for being able to do.

Kailey Raymond: No, it's really important. I think that most companies, you'll be able to highlight an individual campaign or you'll be able to highlight just one particular element of what they do very well, but being able to marry that entire funnel together to create a customer experience that feels Unified is incredibly difficult to do.

Ali Miller: Yeah.

Kailey Raymond: What changes do you see on the horizon in the next six to 12 months. I know we've talked a lot about AI, and that might be what is on everybody's mind, anything as relates to data in the next six to 12 months?

Ali Miller: Yeah. It is really hard to not just come back to the generative AI part. If I... When I hear six to 12 months, it's like, What is even gonna be possible? When we're thinking through our plans as a company for the next three to six months even. I'm not even sure what to write down yet, it's almost like, Leave space here for amazing thing that generative will now enable us to do that we didn't even think was possible today. And so I do really think that the speed of transformation is astounding, whether it's like the fundamentals of engineering productivity, checking whether data is correct, these are areas that generative AI is also really powerful for and something that we're starting to invest in to see how we can really make the guts of our system and the people who are coding more successful and productive, I think this is a really amazing part of it that's going to make our data better as long as we invest in it in the right way.

Ali Miller: And then when you move all the way back up to what is the consumer actually going to see and experience, we're going to need to be able to measure all those interactions of those incredibly personalized inspirational carousels of ads and ad experiences, and we're going to need to find that balance of the level of control that the brand is comfortable seeding to us in order to generate the creative, generate the context for the creative, whatever it may be, and then prove why that is actually going to be the most valuable way to invest in the platform, so that's a whole area as well that is just now starting to enter the conversation, we've talked about dynamic creative forever in this industry that this is now truly, truly dynamic and truly generated by not a human. Probably will be curated by a human probably will be reviewed by a human but will need to...

Kailey Raymond: For sure.

Ali Miller: Yes, I don't know any company that's gonna be like, Yep, go for it. So yeah, we're gonna have to figure out what is the right way to find this balance, what's the right way to measure it? What's the right way to think about it? But I can obviously continue to say, We're gonna invest in all of these great things that we've been talking about, incrementality metrics, better data, a better understanding of how campaigns are performing, and that's so, so important, and that's fundamental to what we'll continue to do. And I'm super proud of the progress that we've made, and in the next six to 12 months, wow, so much is gonna change and so many experiences will come to life that we hadn't even imagined before.

Kailey Raymond: I love the mentality around leaving that open space for innovation for creativity on your team, obviously, especially now with AI, your brain is churning and thinking about all the different possibilities, but always leaving that 20% or so to just test and learn, that's what we say as a marketing team, you can plan only so much the world change is pretty darn quickly. And you definitely have to make sure that you're a part of it. Last question for you Ali. What steps or recommendations would you have to somebody that's trying to do what you do, which is up-leveling customer engagement strategies?

Ali Miller: I think the biggest thing for me is understanding your customer, understanding who you're serving at the end of the day, and for me, I talked about the people behind the CPGs as an example. It makes no sense to work in this industry if you don't know who those people are, how they think, what else they're balancing in their day, whether it's a large company that's trying to balance all of their stakeholders and advocate to their boss, why should they invest in Instacart, they better have a really good answer from us, they better have a really good recommendation, and they need to believe it, that's a very human thing, that's not a product thing, that's not a data thing, those things help, but ultimately it's really the power of convincing, and then when it comes to a brand that's trying to break through, what are they balancing, what are they worried about, what do they think is really hard, what can we do that's gonna make their lives a little bit easier? And so I feel it's just so important to understand the customer, it's such a basic thing, but I think we sometimes forget in the day-to-day it's like, Oh, I gotta get this feature, I gotta like Write a product requirements doc or all of that, but ultimately we need to connect to who we are helping and who we're trying to resonate with, and that that is really coming down to the power of persuasion, the power of human interaction, and maybe that's the best protection against AI taking over from us.

Kailey Raymond: Bringing it back to being human it's so true. I think that the Fundamentals can get lost in the day-to-day of task lists and projects and all checking off the list and reminding yourself to lift your head up and think about why you're doing it and you're doing it for the customer.

Ali Miller: Yeah. Absolutely.

Kailey Raymond: Ali, thanks so much for being here. I learned a ton. A lot of incredible examples. I really appreciate it.

Ali Miller: Awesome, thank you so much. With a great conversation.

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