Instacart is enhancing its suite of analytics tools by launching its new Category Share of Digital Shelf metric. This new reporting feature provides brands with a holistic view of their performance in specific categories on Instacart, providing insights similar to in-store monitoring of share of shelf.
Let’s take a look at what this share of voice feature can do for advertisers on Instacart, how SOV is used in other digital marketplaces, and for which developments advertisers should be on the lookout.
What is Share of Voice?
Share of Voice, at its core, is a metric that measures a brand’s visibility compared to its competitors. Often, this is broken down into subcategories, like Organic SOV vs. Paid SOV, as well as a combination of the two known as Share of Shelf. Additionally, weighted SOV takes into account being at a top search position— placing more importance on a position at the top of the page, which is more likely to drive conversion.
Robust share of voice measurement tools allow brands to understand their Share of Voice at a more granular level (brand or keyword),and the most advanced functionalities go as far as to update these numbers on an hourly basis. Regardless of the exact parameters within a Share of Voice tool, the value remains consistent: understand how often potential customers are seeing your products.
How the Share of Voice feature helps Instacart Advertisers
Last month, Instacart launched additional ‘category share of shelf’ analytics, bolstering the dataset available for its advertisers. From Instacart’s announcement, “The new metric provides a holistic view into how your different brands are performing in their categories. It can function as a business health indicator and enable you to quickly identify trends and make data-driven business decisions.”
“I like to look monthly at SOV within Instacart to understand how we are trending over time against competitors and how much this metric changes as we scale campaigns.” says Niccoló Gloazzo, Director of Media and Omnichannel at Kettle & Fire. “It is a good point of reference and useful secondary KPI to track.”
As a “Share of Shelf” feature, specifically, this means that the reporting considers organic and paid search results together. Counting the first page, without scrolling, this reporting gives a high-level view of how often your products are being seen within your categories.
Gloazzo elaborates on how Instacart’s SOV capabilities could be improved: “Currently, SOV increases can be influenced by distribution growth, so weighing the metric against actual eligible placements would provide an even more precise view of our true shares.”
He continues “That said, this is a significant step forward in Instacart’s analytics capabilities, and I’m confident the platform will continue to refine and optimize these metrics to deliver even more actionable insights.”
Pacvue’s Advanced SOV functionality
Understanding your product’s presence within certain search terms is an important first step. However, without detailed keyword/placement data and hourly updates, it can be challenging for brands to take action on Share of Voice data that ultimately translates to conversions.
For instance, let’s say you’re promoting a vegan protein powder that’s not showing up for your top keywords. Pacvue’s campaign manager allows you to launch campaigns that optimize for top ranking – meaning your bids are automatically adjusted to keep the #1 spot for key search terms, say “vegan protein powder.” As the campaign unfolds, you can track the progress, beyond ACoS or CTR, with both Organic and Paid SOV data.
In this example, with an aggressive advertising strategy, you would expect Paid Share to be quite high, while also looking for the Organic Share to see an uptick as sales rise. Looking at Share of Shelf alone would leave some questions unanswered, since it combines the two SOV metrics, providing potentially misleading data on the campaign’s success.
Matt Wheatley, Senior Account Executive at Pacvue, shares his thoughts –
“Pacvue’s Share of Voice data is a game changer for brands on Instacart to understand how they stack up against their competition.
Unblinded competitive Share of Voice at a keyword (and retailer) level has transformed our clients’ understanding of their business on Instacart, and empowered them to make data-based decisions that drive conversions.
In today’s retail media landscape with competitive pressures higher than ever, real-time data and the ability to seamlessly act are king; Pacvue gives brands and agencies a behind the scenes look at their presence on shelf with automated tools that help them win.”
Conclusion
Incorporating SOV data is vital to finding success within retail media, which means every new SOV feature or advancement should have your ears perked up. While the complexity of Instacart’s tool might leave something to be desired, it’s a crucial stepping stone for marketers on the platform to begin familiarizing themselves with Share of Voice.
Looking to unlock the next layer of share data? Book some time with one of our product experts to dive into the platform, discover opportunities for growth, and begin that first step toward accelerating your business on Instacart.
