Publicis Transforms Instacart Campaign Management to Lower CPCs By 62% And Drive 130% NTB Growth

For consumer healthcare marketers, using the right tools to manage a wide range of products and ad types on Instacart can be the difference between a headache or a sigh of sweet relief.

For Publicis, managing Instacart campaigns for its consumer healthcare client already required a more hands-on approach. Each week, the agency spent hours reviewing long lists of auto-added keywords then had to manually adjust bids to stay competitive. As competition grew and CPCs steadily rose, that manual effort was becoming too much of a pain for the team. So when performance began to slip, and with it, confidence in the investment, the agency knew they needed a smarter, faster way to manage campaigns. The team wanted a platform that could help them move beyond reactive optimizations toward proactive, more strategic growth through advanced automations and innovative tools.That’s where Skai came in.

Publicis leveraged Skai’s platform to bring additional efficiency and performance lifts to its day-to-day workflows and campaign strategy that Instacart’s standard features couldn’t match. And like every smart marketer, Publicis started with a test to compare the different optimization levers and benefits across Skai versus the native tools. The goal for the test was clear- spend less time on manual tasks, drive CPCs down, and get back to growing ROAS.

Skai’s retail media platform empowered the Publicis team to take back control, helping automating manual edits, optimizing with precision, and enabling faster, smarter decisions to drive measurable business growth. But it wasn’t just about saving time. The test was also a means to unlock better outcomes for every dollar invested in Instacart and validate ad spend and tactics for the client.

Immediately, Publicis began to unlock new efficiencies by leveraging Skai’s automation and optimization features. Skai’s capabilities provided the team with more advanced features to simplify and improve campaign management.

• Automated Actions allowed them to set clear rules around CPC and ROAS goals. Bids were automatically adjusted whenever performance thresholds were hit, eliminating the need for manual reviews
• Keyword Labeling: Known as Dimensions & Categories, custom labeling in Skai made it easy to identify newly automatically added keywords and manage them quickly, ensuring budget stayed focused on top-performing terms.
• Dayparting and Scheduling: Campaigns were automatically adjusted to be more competitive during peak shopping hours and more efficient during off-peak periods

The switch to Skai drove fast and meaningful improvements during the test. What had once taken the Publicis team over two hours a week now took just 30 minutes in Skai, freeing up more time to focus on higher-value strategic tasks instead of manual campaign maintenance for Instacart.

And efficiency gains were just the beginning.

As optimizations became faster and more precise, campaign performance improved:

• Search CPC dropped by 62%, with CPCs falling under $2—something the team hadn’t seen since early 2024.
• Search campaigns saw CPCs drop below $1, boosting ROAS above $5.
• With more efficient CPCs, the team strategically increased default bids, boosting visibility across more Instacart ad types.
• New-to-Brand (NTB) sales surged, growing 130% on default bid sales, and increasing 59% overall compared to the previous period.

Publicis Media harnesses the power of modern media through leading agency brands Dysrupt, Infinite Roar, Publicis Collective, Publicis Health Media, Spark Foundry, Starcom and Zenith, as well as global accelerator PMX; immersive experience group PMCI (inclusive of Picture Motion and RDL Worldwide); and access to integrated platform-based technologies and offerings from CJ, Epsilon and Influential. Publicis Media’s digital-first, data-driven global solutions deliver client value and drive growth in a platform-powered world.

Learn more at publicisgroupe.com.