Two things everyone loves: late-night snacks and retail media networks.
Okay, maybe the latter is up for debate, but advertisers certainly love RMNs (within reason – there is such a thing as too many).
But putting that issue aside, retail media is becoming a lucrative revenue generator for Gopuff, purveyor of aforementioned late-night snacks. On Tuesday, the on-demand delivery service announced a partnership with GrowthLoop, a composable CDP that uses agentic AI tools to create custom audiences and enhance targeting capabilities.
A composable CDP connects directly to a marketer’s data warehouse, which means their data stays where it already lives, instead of having to be ported in from an outside system. Traditional CDPs typically require marketers to send or sync data into the vendor’s environment.
Composability saves advertisers time by letting them segment “directly on top” of first-party data, according to Anthony Rotio, co-founder and co-CEO of GrowthLoop. And if there’s anything advertisers and their media partners are in dire need of, he added, it’s time back in their day and improved precision.
Accurate targeting? GoFish.
One of the most frustrating aspects of retail media has always been the lack of audience targeting, said JR Crosby, Gopuff’s director of ad tech and data partnerships.
Gopuff launched its RMN in 2021. But before working with GrowthLoop, most of the ad targeting it could offer was based on keyword and category. Which is to say, if someone searched for chips, an ad for Lay’s potato chips might pop up. Simple enough.
A couple of years ago, Gopuff launched an option for more specific audience targeting. But it still took a lot of time and resources for Gopuff to create new segments, Crosby said. In total, Gopuff had about 100 segments for buyers to select from, in addition to 75 segments specific to BevMo!, a retail subsidiary of Gopuff that sells alcoholic beverages.
A lot of brands would request custom segments, he added, “and we just said no, we can’t do it.”
That’s no longer the case.
The expansion pack
Since integrating with GrowthLoop, Gopuff has expanded to include 600 audience segments, and BevMo! has reached 400. Fewer brands ask for custom segments now that they have more granular options to choose from, said Crosby. But if they do want custom segments, Gopuff is able to turn them around in roughly 48 hours through GrowthLoop’s audience builder.
The audience builder plugs into Snowflake with access to Gopuff’s first-party data, said GrowthLoop’s Rotio. The feature also uses AI agents that can analyze client briefs and generate audiences.
If a soda company wants to create a campaign that exclusively targets diet soda drinkers in Florida, for instance, Gopuff’s team can simply go into the GrowthLoop platform and select the filters for location and past purchase intent. The agents would do the rest.
For advertisers who need a little more handholding, Gopuff also has a managed service offering that orchestrates all of a client’s media buys. Gopuff isn’t just selling its own inventory; it’s planning and buying across a broader mix of media on a brand’s behalf. There’s only so much ad space on Gopuff’s own properties.
But the off-platform buys still “[point] back to Gopuff,” said Crosby, proving its value as not just an ad property but a media-buying partner.
On Gopuff’s own properties, sponsored product ads tend to perform best, according to Crosby. Sampling is also “a big business for us,” he added, especially now that Gopuff can use its enhanced audience capabilities to make those samples more relevant to users.
Sometimes that could mean a brand targeting existing customers to improve retention rates, Crosby said, or it could look like the opposite: targeting category buyers who have never purchased this particular brand with the intent of generating more “household penetration.”
(As a side note, people in ad tech love to use the word penetration as often as possible.)
But, to be fair, Gopuff is successfully penetrating new audiences. “The level of granularity now available in our syndicated audiences is just really exciting,” Crosby said. “We’re moving fast.”
