Instacart Expands Shoppable TV Partnership With Roku

Instacart says it is expanding its advertising partnership with streaming TV platform Roku.

As the food delivery company noted in a news release Wednesday (Oct. 9), Roku and Instacart have been collaborating since last year to offer advertisers insights to gauge the impact of TV ads on eCommerce purchases.

Now, the companies are offering new advertising capabilities to all advertisers, including shoppable ads for consumer packaged goods (CPG) companies.

“On Roku, CPG advertisers can create a direct path to purchase from their ad creative via text messaging or QR code, with Instacart as the landing destination,” the release said. “With Instacart, people watching Roku can go from seeing an ad to getting the advertised products in their hands in as fast as an hour — shopping from their favorite retailers.”

In addition, advertisers can now make “targeted, high-impact shoppable placements” on the Roku Home Screen that steers users to buy those products over Instacart. Brands can also design targeted ads for customers based on their purchasing patterns on Instacart.

The partnership follows a similar shoppable advertising collaboration announced between Instacart and YouTube in June.

As PYMNTS wrote earlier this year, retailers and brands are finding that shoppable content — such as interactive ads — could go a long way toward fueling conversion as consumers’ omnichannel shopping habits change.

“Online merchants are faced with the challenge of preventing customer drop-off at each stage of the buying journey,” that report said.

“The friction points leading to cart abandonment — a complicated page navigation experience, unclear checkout processes, redirection to external pages — are mitigated when brands and retailers can offer seamlessly integrated purchasing options.”

Research by PYMNTS Intelligence from the report “How Preferred Payment Availability Can Reduce Cart Abandonment” found that shoppers abandoned shopping carts on brands’ sites an average of eight times in the prior 30 days and six times on retailers’ sites.

“By minimizing the steps required to make a purchase, merchants can reduce the likelihood of abandoned carts and propelling conversion rates,” PYMNTS wrote. “Shoppable content is emerging as a more frictionless solution, offering an intuitive and direct path to purchase.”

Consumers seem at least somewhat open to shoppable TV experiences, according to additional PYMNTS Intelligence research.

The report “How We Will Pay Report: How Connected Devices Enable Multitasking Among Digital-First Consumers” found that a third of connected device owners would be interested in being able to purchase clothing or jewelry that they see actors wearing in a film or on a TV series directly from the streaming platform.