McCormick® Elevates Brand Growth with Instacart and The Trade Desk In-Flight Measurement Capability

The McCormick brand, a flavor company, achieved impressive campaign performance and portfolio growth participating in the Instacart in-flight measurement beta test in partnership with The Trade Desk. The initiative, which introduces daily refreshed closed-loop measurement directly within The Trade Desk platform, is setting a new standard in real-time campaign optimization and retail media effectiveness.

Driving Innovation with Data-Driven Campaigns

Working alongside agency partner Flywheel, McCormick leveraged Instacart first-party data to promote its dry recipe mix seasoning packets in the lead-up to Cinco de Mayo. A key feature of the beta was the ability for advertisers to make optimizations during a campaign, thanks to daily reporting and sales insights, including at the inventory (domain/URL) level — an industry differentiator compared to other retail media network programmatic activations.

Notably, Flywheel conducted an overlap analysis that showed just up to 7% user overlap versus another retailer’s programmatic campaign, emphasizing Instacart as a complementary media buy for reaching incremental, unique audiences.

Results that Inspire Confidence

During the campaign, Flywheel accessed closed-loop measurement metrics in near real-time via The Trade Desk for their Instacart campaigns, enabling agile, data-driven optimizations. The Flywheel team leveraged inventory level optimizations based on attributed sales data and shifted delivery to sites with higher performance when optimizing, which elevated performance across key metrics.

This approach paid off: as optimizations progressed throughout the campaign flight, average CPMs were reduced by 24% when comparing the first 14 days of the campaign versus the last 14 days of the campaign, and the return on ad spend (ROAS) for the featured SKU rose by an impressive 300%+.*

Moreover, during the campaign flight, the brand saw core product sales increase for the McCormick brand, suggesting strong impact when running media leading up to a key holiday. On May 4th—the day before Cinco de Mayo— the featured SKUs saw year-over-year sales climb by 28% and unit growth surge by 29% on Instacart.

Amplifying Brand Impact Across the Portfolio

Beyond individual product success, McCormick brand’s campaign demonstrated a remarkable “halo effect” across its broader portfolio. During the period when McCormick leaned into media with Instacart to support the lead up to Cinco de Mayo, McCormick saw that over one-third of consumers shopping McCormick priority categories, such as hot sauce and seasonings, were new-to-brand**. 34% of Instacart customers during this period were also new to buying McCormick brand’s featured SKU, with a +3 pts increase in the percent of new-to-brand customers post-optimization.*

By targeting premium audiences upstream, the campaign drove strong sales across several core and adjacent categories available on Instacart. Highlights of year-over-year sales growth for the month leading up to Cinco de Mayo included range from +5% to 40% across various McCormick categories.

Adjacent categories also benefitted, with two categories delivering their best performance in over a year (+25% and +14% respectively).

Future-Forward Advertising with Instacart

This new solution highlights the immense value of pairing in-platform capabilities on The Trade Desk with robust first-party Instacart data and near real-time measurement. By allowing advertisers to optimize toward ROAS and select premium audiences, brands like McCormick can drive measurable impact both for featured SKUs and across their broader portfolio, cementing Instacart as a vital partner for growth-oriented CPGs.

As the digital grocery landscape continues to evolve, the success of the McCormick brand's campaign underscores how retail media partnerships that offer transparent, granular measurement empower brands to maximize relevance, reach, and results.

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*Comparing campaign results from 4/1/25 to 4/14/25 versus results from 4/22/25 - 5/5/25.

**Sales from users not purchasing from the overall brand on Instacart Marketplace in last 26 weeks 

Prior results do not guarantee future outcomes.   

This post contains third-party claims and descriptions provided by the featured third party brand.  Instacart does not make any representation as to the accuracy or suitability of any of the information provided herein by the featured brand. 

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