What Retail Media Can Learn from Instacart’s AI Strategy

In this episode of The Intelligent Leader, host Shashank Garg welcomes Ali Miller, Vice President of Ads Product at Instacart, to unpack the rapidly evolving world of retail media. With prior roles at Google and YouTube, Ali brings a seasoned perspective to how data, technology, and consumer behavior are reshaping digital advertising in the commerce space. What follows is a wide-ranging conversation on incrementality, AI, privacy, and the promise of full-funnel media strategies.

A Vision for Retail Media at Scale

Ali’s journey from Google to Instacart reflects the broader transformation of digital commerce. She now leads the charge in building out Instacart’s powerful retail media ecosystem, a platform designed to connect thousands of retailers and brands with customers in more personalized, data-driven ways. The goal? To make grocery shopping not just seamless, but smart.

She emphasized how Instacart is expanding its ads platform with new capabilities, ranging from shoppable media formats to real-time optimization, creating a full-funnel marketing engine that brings real-world results. “It’s about delivering a product to someone’s hands within an hour of them seeing an ad,” she said, spotlighting the loop-closing power of digital-meets-physical commerce.

Strategic Bets: Clean Rooms and Connected TV

Among Instacart’s boldest moves are partnerships like its CTV campaigns with NBC during the Paris Olympics. The concept of “virtual concessions” allowed viewers to scan QR codes and have snacks delivered almost instantly, bridging the gap between entertainment and commerce.

Ali highlighted how these innovative campaigns leverage Instacart’s proprietary catalog and first-party data to drive conversions, all while maintaining strict privacy standards. “It should feel seamless to the consumer,” she explained, noting that beneath the surface lies a complex orchestration of data integrity, clean room integrations (with partners like LiveRamp), and rigorous consent governance.

Measurement That Builds Trust

In a world flooded with impressions and click-through rates, the true value lies in proving incrementality, and Instacart has made this a central focus. “CPGs have very high standards,” Miller said. “They want to know the actual business impact.”

Instacart’s internal models measure sales lift through rigorous holdout testing, and the results speak volumes: a 15% average sales lift for sponsored products, with some brands seeing double that. This dedication to transparency and measurement even led Instacart to pursue Media Rating Council (MRC) accreditation—an unusual but commendable step in the retail media space.

AI and the Future of Personalization

Personalization is a double-edged sword—it drives relevance but demands trust. Miller explained how Instacart balances this by focusing on smarter context over more data. Generative AI is now being used to enhance product recommendations, build better metadata, and even auto-generate campaign landing pages for smaller brands.

The company is also experimenting with agentic AI to help advertisers automate campaign analysis, simulate strategies, and optimize budgets across networks. These tools are not just futuristic—they’re being deployed today to reduce manual effort and improve campaign outcomes, especially for emerging brands with limited resources.

Simplifying a Fragmented Ecosystem

Looking ahead, Miller sees a need to simplify what has become an overwhelmingly fragmented landscape. With hundreds of retail media networks vying for attention, brands need fewer, more reliable platforms. Instacart’s Carrot Ads initiative is a step toward this, enabling partners like Thrive Market and Hy-Vee to tap into the same tools powering Instacart’s own campaigns.

This approach also paves the way for omnichannel engagement—extending dynamic, personalized experiences into physical retail spaces like grocery store aisles via smart carts and in-store displays.

Advice for Retailers and Advertisers

Miller’s closing advice? Think beyond ad tech. Build for the consumer first. Make partnerships and interoperability a cornerstone. And above all, lead with trust—because in a world of automation, personalization, and real-time delivery, trust is the glue that holds everything together.

This Intelligent Leader episode makes clear, the future of retail media isn’t just about ads—it’s about building a connected, contextual, and commerce-driven ecosystem that serves everyone: brands, retailers, and most importantly, consumers.