Working with Instacart Ads: MoonPie

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.

** Nothing in this article should be construed as a guarantee about the outcome of any particular advertising campaign.  Individual results may vary. 

In this article, we look at the success story of MoonPie, a Chattanooga Bakery, Inc. brand. Since launching on Instacart Ads, MoonPie’s presence on the site has skyrocketed, resulting in a 300% sales lift. 

Chattanooga Bakery is a fourth-generation, family-owned business, named after the popular residential and tourist community near Chattanooga, Lookout Mountain. In 1917, after a brainstorming conversation between a bakery salesman and some Appalachian coal miners, the MoonPie was born, and by the 1930s, it was the bakery’s #1 seller, a spot it still occupies today. 

In Spring 2020, with the pandemic causing an increase in grocery shopping, they saw a huge spike in sales. However, since their MoonPies are considered an impulse purchase item, they realized that their in-store successes were not carrying over online, as customers didn’t know to look for their product. 

New to the world of e-commerce advertising, they didn’t have a lot of expectations going into their first campaign, but knew that they wanted to increase their exposure, and bring their products to customers’ focus as they browsed the site. 

Among Instacart’s suite of advertising products, the best advertising option for their current needs was Featured Product. This ad product was quick to get off the ground, and would allow them to bring their products up to premium shelf placement in not only search, but other discoverable placements on the site as well, like the home page, department view, related items, and last-minute additions. 

Their campaign ran for about a month, with strong default bids to make sure that they were winning in the auction for the discoverable ad spots on the site. The exposure worked, and their overall sales increased by 3x during the month with a 3.7x basket penetration increase as well.

Elizabeth Griffin who managed the advertising campaign from the MoonPie team was excited to see the success of the campaign, and relayed that MoonPie “[has] decided to add more products for our next campaign, along with doubling our ad-spend budget!” From a brand that was new to the e-commerce space to a believer in the power of online advertising, Griffin and the Chattanooga Bakery, Inc. team now see the advertising opportunity on Instacart as “a natural extension of our overall sales and marketing strategy… We are looking forward to seeing more favorable results, thanks to Instacart.”

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Instacart is the leading grocery technology company in North America, partnering with more than 1,400 national, regional, and local retail banners to deliver from more than 80,000 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.