Working with Instacart Ads: Flywheel + Anheuser-Busch Success Story

In this series, Working with Instacart Ads, we take a look at real-world examples of brand partners who have successfully used Instacart Ads to meet, and exceed, their advertising objectives. 

In this article, we look at the success of Anheuser-Busch brand, NÜTRL. Since engaging with Flywheel and leveraging Instacart Ads, the brand has seen: 

• Reach increase by 200% overall 
• Reach extend to over 15% of the total Spirits category customers on Instacart
• A 2x increase in WoW clicks

Anheuser-Busch has built a legacy brewing great-tasting, high-quality beers that have satisfied beer drinkers for generations. Today, they own and operate more than 120 facilities producing several of America’s most loved beer brands, including Budweiser, Bud Light, Michelob ULTRA and Stella Artois. One of their newer brands, NÜTRL, is a light spirits-based seltzer made from simple ingredients and real fruit juice.

Anheuser-Busch teamed up with Flywheel, a managed service provider that solves the most difficult challenges in search, media, content, assortment, ordering, forecasting, and planning. Their team provides industry-leading technology and methodology to help the world’s most complex brands disproportionately win in digital commerce.

Anheuser-Busch was looking to drive visibility for the NÜTRL brand. Their overall goal was to increase reach and media delivery against new items, in addition to increasing brand recognition among consumers shopping online at their favorite retailers through Instacart. 

“Instacart provides an opportunity to engage and inspire online consumers across a wide range of retailers that offer our products. By collaborating on best-in-class eCommerce experiences, we have found a winning strategy that, beyond eCommerce sales, also allows our brands to have a deeper digital connection with customers at the point of purchase. Instacart has been a great partner in finding targeted ways for consumers to discover our brands and deliver the right content for the right moment.” – Rebecca Christiansen, Head of eRetail at Anheuser-Busch.

Flywheel and Anheuser-Busch launched and managed extensive sponsored product ads support using Flywheel’s proprietary technology. This allowed the team to surface their products in search and begin to reach consumers in the category. 

After initial positive results leveraging Instacart’s sponsored product ads, there was still a desire for higher reach for the new NÜTRL products outside of standard PLA. Flywheel and Anheuser-Busch looked to launch a concurrent display ads activation. Instacart’s display ads equip brands to promote engaging, targeted, creative content directly at the point of purchase.

Flywheel’s extensive experience with Instacart test-and-learns allowed for a quick turnaround on a trial period for the new inventory, with the goal of measuring the lift driven by the additional targeting capabilities and page space.  

“Flywheel has been instrumental in assisting Anheuser-Busch refine our Digital Marketing strategy on Retailer Media networks [like] Instacart. The Digital marketing space is constantly changing and Flywheel has continued to offer real-time, quality strategy adjustments to help our ever evolving digital strategy.” – Patrick Varner, Instacart eKAM at Anheuser-Busch. 

Leveraging the additional placement allowed NÜTRL to increase the reach of the brand by 200% overall, and at peak performance, reach over 15% of total Spirits category customers. The media performance grouped together ended up driving the highest click and impression volume, with almost a 2x increase in clicks WoW with the addition.

To learn how Flywheel can help with your advertising campaigns on Instacart, please reach out to our sales team at [email protected].

Interested in getting started with Instacart Ads? Visit ads.instacart.com/signup. 

From responsible drinking programs and emergency drinking water donations to industry-leading sustainability efforts, Anheuser-Busch are guided by an unwavering commitment to supporting the communities they call home. For more information, visit www.anheuser-busch.com or follow Anheuser-Busch on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.

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Instacart is the leading grocery technology company in North America, partnering with more than 1,500 national, regional, and local retail banners to deliver from more than 85,000 stores across more than 14,000 cities in North America. To read more Instacart posts, you can browse the company blog or search by keyword using the search bar at the top of the page.