Instacart is off to a busy start in 2024, with the Google tie-up the latest bid to round out its budding advertising business. The news, unveiled at the closely watched CES tech confab in Las Vegas, is indicative of how off-site channels are increasingly valuable for retail media networks as they look to scale faster and contend with saturated inventory on their owned properties. It also represents a bigger bet on retail media from Google, which is trying to nudge more people using its search engine toward purchases of everyday goods like groceries.
