Uber’s head of CPG partnerships shares how the app is working with retail brands

Having established itself as a delivery go-to for everything from local restaurant takeout to a 2 am Taco Bell Crunchwrap, Uber Eats has been working to meet consumers’ CPG needs, like a blue Gatorade or a stick of deodorant delivered straight to their door. And with more grocery and convenience retailers on the app has come new advertising opportunities for these CPGs.

Uber formally debuted its dedicated advertising division in October 2022, and has amassed more than 400,000 advertisers with a projected annual advertising revenue of $650 million. On Uber Eats, that new advertising push includes CPG partnerships beyond banner ads, with newer offerings like sponsored items added in May and video ads introduced in June.

With its first-party consumer data collected from Eats and its rides business, Uber’s ad business has a competitive advantage over other delivery services, one of the main reasons Megan Ramm, Uber’s global director and head of CPG partnerships, joined the company last year from Snap’s CPG team, she told Retail Brew.

“As you look at the competitive nature of the digital landscape, there’s only a couple of players that really have those datasets,” she said. Ramm shared how the delivery giant is partnering with CPGs like PepsiCo to leverage this consumer data and striking a balance with the organic consumer shopping experience as the company grows its advertising biz.

Up to data: Since Uber tends to reach a younger consumer set than competitors like Instacart, Ramm noted the company has more insights into that demographic’s spending behaviors, as well as what’s in consumers’ baskets for convenience-driven orders rather than larger grocery hauls.

• Uber can also serve consumers targeted ads based on location data; i.e., if your Uber is headed to Target, it can offer a customer an add-to-wallet coupon for a brand sold at the retailer, which gives Uber an omnichannel advantage, Ramm noted.

When Uber is partnering with a CPG brand, Ramm said the company pairs the brand’s consumer insights with its own data around consumer behavior to set objectives around sales, market share, and acquiring new consumers.

Before Uber Eats introduced its sponsored items offering—where a product is the first result in a category on a retailer’s landing page, sort of like an end cap in a grocery aisle—it partnered with PepsiCo as part of an alpha program to get more data on how this ad product could potentially perform. Brands like Gatorade, Doritos, and of course, Pepsi were featured as sponsored items on the app, and the CPG giant has since seen 5:1 ROI, she said. Ramm said tests like those are “hold-your-breath moments” when it’s unclear how ads will impact the consumer experience, but she said they have thus far been additive.

“There’s a lot of runway and mindshare to be gained with this audience on the platform and advertising when done right—when personalized and when in an environment that you want to see it—will convert these types of businesses,” she said.

The sponsored items offering, which Ramm noted brands can use both to push well-known products as well as get eyes on new innovations, has since attracted big CPGs Coca-Cola, Mondelez, and Mars.

• As of this writing, a 7-Eleven in New York City lists products like Gatorade Frost Glacier Freeze, Swedish Fish, and Hershey’s Milk Chocolate Dipped Pretzels as sponsored products.

As SMBs have long been a staple to Uber Eats’s restaurant business, the company is also seeing interest from smaller CPGs, she said. Ramm said Uber Eats also anticipates “rapid growth” within beauty and personal care as it moves deeper into specialty retail.

“The affluent nature of the audience, the attentive nature of the audience both on rides and on Eats is driving the categories we can play in,” she said.

Eating away: With the addition of so many new ad formats, Uber still has to ensure consumers don’t get too bombarded with sponsored content. Ramm said that 30% of new Uber Eats customers come over from the rides app and transition from restaurant delivery to convenience and grocery, which she attributes to to the “quality of the organic experience,” but she said the company will continue to run “experiments” to ensure new ad formats don’t detract from trip numbers or revenue.

“If you continue to keep this consumer at the forefront, keep the organic experience top notch and searching and browsing and buying easy, our hope is that ads as a subset of that will feel very natural, and they’ll feel like they were meant to be there.”