Grocery platform Instacart reportedly explores a sale

The talks are early. Instacart reportedly hired an investment bank and discussed a sale with DoorDash, a restaurant and grocery delivery rival. Uber reportedly ended its talks. No deal is agreed.

More than deliveries could change hands. Instacart runs a shopping marketplace, powers retailers’ own online stores and sells advertising to brands. A buyer could gain several relationships with the same grocer.

A sale would not prove distress. Instacart reported US$1.043 billion in quarterly revenue, up 14%, and US$111 million in profit. Its board’s actual reason for considering a sale remains unknown.

Partnership is already an alternative. Uber Eats restaurant delivery has been offered through Instacart under a US partnership announced in 2024. Sharing customers need not mean shared ownership.

Retailers elsewhere face the same dependency question. Check which provider controls customer demand and store software. These reported US talks establish no worldwide deal or higher fees.

Read the denominator. Of 161 brands answering an open investment question, about 74, or 46%, named measurable returns or extra sales. Researchers grouped each answer into one main theme.

Reports remain disconnected. The wider 281-person survey covered the UK, US, France, Germany, Spain and Australia. Only 14% always received unified reports across channels. Brands can struggle to compare different retailers' results.

Sales credited to ads are not necessarily caused by ads. Incremental sales are purchases that would not happen without advertising. A combined report does not establish that missing comparison.

The lesson travels. Advertisers elsewhere face the same distinction between assigning sales to ads and proving impact. Advertising trade bodies’ guidance matches measurement strength to the decision; rigorous experiments also carry costs.

Keep the incentive visible. Research coauthor SMG sells retail-advertising services and software. The survey supplies a buyer signal, not proof its commercial solution works or a worldwide spending forecast.

Twice the recorded involvement. Across 185 advertisers, affiliates received final-click credit in 12.41% of transactions but appeared somewhere before purchase in 24.92%. Earlier reviews or recommendations can disappear from the final-click view.

Older evidence, new framework. BVDW published this comparison in June. The October paper proposes keeping final-click rules for commissions while using a second view of earlier contacts to judge partners.

Participation is not extra sales. The industry-supplied dataset does not establish which purchases would disappear without affiliates. The paper proposes control-group tests but reports no resulting sales uplift.

Investigate before reallocating. Earlier partners may deserve more credit, but the larger percentage alone does not justify doubling budgets. The paper does not identify the advertiser mix or say how far back it counted contacts.

Use the distinction elsewhere. Merchants outside Germany can separate commissions, recorded participation and tested additional sales. These German percentages are not a benchmark for their own customers.

Share the offer, protect the relationship. Some 86% share product descriptions with external agents or plan to within two years. Separately, 87% would never share customer or behavior data. One helps an assistant choose a product; the other helps the retailer understand its own shoppers.

Accurate data needs an operating system behind it. Two-year marketplace plans put better product data at 67% and current stock information at 58%, ahead of conversational search at 39%. Meanwhile, 63% plan personalized offers, but 33% plan systems that immediately choose a useful next offer or action. Keeping customer knowledge has value only if the retailer can use it.

Advertising plans still need evidence of results. Retail media means advertising sold by retailers. New agent advertising formats remain largely planned. Among retailers that launched enhancements, 65% report better campaigns, 55% more outside-seller demand and spending, and 40% higher media prices. These are shares reporting benefits, not percentage improvements. The subgroup size is undisclosed.

Amazon leads mentions, but the gap changes by channel. Its 120.8 million social mentions compare with Walmart.com's 8.6 million in August 2025–July 2026. Yet its AI visibility share was 19.3% versus 14% in Onclusive's separate August 3 test of GPT-5 and Perplexity. Mentions count references, not shoppers or sales; the AI test's prompts are undisclosed.

Social shopping earns the highest momentum score. Buying through social platforms scores 9 out of 10 in the category assessment, versus 4 for hybrid marketplaces that sell both their own stock and outside sellers' goods. These are publisher growth scores, not sales-growth percentages. Social commerce has little mainstream-media weight despite that higher score.

Delivery and service still need attention. Tracking transparency leads product-and-service discussion topics at 16.8%, ahead of delivery speed at 12.8%. Social-commerce experience leads a separate experience ranking at 13.9%. These are topic shares with undisclosed exact denominators, not complaint rates. The report describes missing parcel updates, weak recommendations and unclear routes to help.

Meta's share of advertising dollars exceeds its share of adults' minutes by 35.1 percentage points in the 2026 forecast. This is a difference between shares, not annual growth.

All other networks together account for a calculated 23.9% of spending and 59.0% of time. The individual shares for TikTok and other platforms are redacted; the combined remainder does not show which rival offers better value.

Meta includes Facebook, Instagram and Threads, excluding WhatsApp. A minute of use is not an ad impression or a sale, so the gap cannot establish whether Meta is overpriced or competitors are cheap.

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Debenhams Group lifted marketplace share to 38.9% of goods sold before returns, helping UK retail margins. Its £28.3m half-year pretax profit includes lease credits; excluding those credits still leaves about a £12m loss.

India's festive sales drew smaller-city shoppers into home upgrades: Flipkart reports 20–22% annual sale growth, while Amazon's category spikes compare with ordinary days. Those measures cannot establish which marketplace won.

Whatnot’s first national US campaign plans seller-led TV ads. Its separate 2027 Irish seller opening would let local businesses serve existing shoppers; detailed launch rules remain unannounced.

Sam’s Club picks Affirm for eligible US purchases of $500 or more. The exclusive agreement starts online in coming weeks, with clubs planned for 2027; purchase approval and possible down payments limit access.

SPAR plans shared ad buying while country retailers keep data control. Its 13,500-plus stores in 50 markets describe potential scale; the announcement does not establish that all are connected.

Apollo questions AI returns beyond seven US tech giants: sales per employee and margins are relatively flat across the other S&P 500 firms. That aggregate comparison cannot establish whether each AI project paid off.

Pennsylvania’s AI-ad law starts December 21: certain misleading AI images, video and audio need disclosures. Text-only content is exempt; a label does not erase other false-advertising liability.