These carrots are officially MRC accredited.
No, but seriously, Instacart has received MRC accreditation for metrics — impressions, clicks, click-through rate (CTR), and viewability — for ads served through Carrot Ads, the company’s white-label retail media ad tech platform.
Carrot Ads allows grocery retailers to monetize their own ecommerce sites by tapping into Instacart’s adtech and existing demand pool of advertisers. The accreditation covers desktop, mobile web, and in-app environments across the U.S. and Canada.
What This Means:
MRC accreditation still matters, regardless of what some “walled gardens” might do/say.
For Instacart, the accreditation provides valuable third-party validation of how it measures ad performance across its formats and units.
For the ecosystem, Carrot Ads powers not only Instacart’s own retail media business but also more than 240 ecommerce partners, reaching over 7,500 CPG advertisers. This network includes major players like Uber Eats and Thrive Market.
In effect, these partner media networks function as extensions of Instacart’s ad campaigns. Instacart provides the adtech and helps drive advertiser demand, creating a kind of syndicated ad network that spans multiple retail and delivery platforms.
Experts React:
Ali Miller, GM of Advertising at Instacart, said the accreditation strengthens advertiser trust at a time when the retail media market is increasingly complex (and maybe even too complex):
“As advertisers are navigating a fragmented retail media landscape, consistent, trustworthy measurement is more important than ever.”
Our Take
We didn’t realize Instacart had this much game. Carrot Ads positions Instacart as more than just an ecommerce company with a retail media network. It sets Instacart up to be an adtech backbone for a long roster of ecommerce partners — particularly emerging networks that may not yet know how to build or scale an ad business. The reach is impressive and underscores the value proposition for all sides of the retail media equation.
