Instacart Cart Assistant ads planned for second half of 2026

Instacart plans to test Instacart Cart Assistant ads in the second half of 2026, introducing sponsored content into conversations where shoppers plan meals, seek offers and compare products. The proposed formats would extend the company’s retail-media business into its artificial-intelligence shopping tool, following a planned expansion of Cart Assistant across its North American marketplace, according to PYMNTS.

The company has not said that advertising is already live in Cart Assistant. Ali Miller, Instacart’s general manager of advertising, told Marketing Dive, as cited by PYMNTS, that the company plans three formats designed for conversational grocery shopping.

• Sponsored recipes and occasions, which could appear when a shopper is planning an event or meal, such as a barbecue.
• Deal surfacing, which would present offers during a conversation.
• Product exploration, aimed at appearing while a shopper considers alternatives.

How will Instacart Cart Assistant ads work?

The formats are intended to place brand messages at distinct stages of a grocery decision. Recipes and occasions address planning; deal surfacing addresses value-seeking; and product exploration addresses comparison. PYMNTS reported that the testing timetable follows Cart Assistant’s planned broader rollout in the US and Canada.

Instacart said in June that Cart Assistant had reached millions of US customers after a testing period. It said the tool draws on more than 1.6 billion lifetime orders and live inventory data. The company also reported that orders placed through the assistant had a higher average value than Instacart’s $115 overall average order value, without disclosing the assistant’s figure.

Cart Assistant supports meal planning, product recommendations, budgeting and nutrition, according to a November 2025 Instacart announcement. The company said the assistant learns from customer interactions, preferences and purchase history. It can be deployed as a white-label tool on retailer websites through Storefront Pro and in physical stores through Caper Carts.

Instacart named Sprouts Farmers Market as a collaborator for deployments across its website, app and Caper Carts. Kroger was set to introduce Cart Assistant in its first-party iOS app, Instacart said. Separately, Instacart said it became Google Gemini’s first grocery partner on May 19, enabling users to link an Instacart account and create a shoppable cart through a conversation.

A new advertising surface for Instacart

Instacart reported more than $1 billion in advertising and other revenue for 2025, with its network reaching nearly 100,000 stores across more than 2,200 retail banners, according to PYMNTS. The company’s own data, also cited by PYMNTS, said its existing recipe ads produced 78% out-of-aisle impressions and 43% new-to-brand sales, while occasion ads produced 90% and 36%, respectively. Those measures are company-reported rather than independent findings.

The planned advertising initiative is separate from Instacart’s prior algorithmic-pricing experiments. Consumer Reports said its December 2025 investigation found different customers were sometimes shown prices for the same grocery item that varied by as much as 23%. Instacart confirmed to Consumer Reports that pricing tests were under way at 10 unnamed retail partners at the time, while characterising them as limited, short-term and randomised. Consumer Reports said in a December 22 update that Instacart stopped offering the technology that allowed retailers to charge different customers different prices for the same groceries at the same time.

That pricing investigation does not establish that Cart Assistant advertising changes prices. The planned formats concern sponsored placement and product discovery within conversations, according to the reporting.

This story draws on original reporting from PYMNTS.