Instacart’s Digital Report Card Ahead of IPO

While not winning by every measure, Instacart has retained web traffic and grown app engagement

The web and mobile app grocery delivery company Instacart is scheduled to begin trading after an initial public offering on Tuesday. Instacart’s strength lies in partnerships with a large number of grocery chains and brands, as well as its popularity with consumers.

Although past the stage of explosive growth that occurred in the first months of the pandemic, digital ordering of groceries has become an ingrained habit for enough consumers to make for a profitable business. Here’s what we see as measures of its reach with consumers. Instacart also has made advertising a core part of its business, so we looked at traffic to its ad portal in addition to measures of consumer engagement.

Because Instacart delivers in the US and Canada, most of the numbers quoted below are for traffic or app engagement from within the US.

Key takeaways

• In August, instacart.com attracted 32.6 million visits in the US, up 4.8% year-over-year. In comparison, doordash.com (which offers both restaurant and grocery delivery), got 56.9 million visits.
• The Instacart app had more than 9.4 million monthly active users of its iOS and Android mobile apps in August, down 13% year-over-year. DoorDash’s app had 25.5 million monthly active users and the UberEats app had 19.2 million in August, although those also dropped year-over-year.
• Instacart’s ad-buying portal ads.instacart.com attracted nearly 35,000 worldwide visits in August, about the same as it did a year ago.

Instacart in comparison with other delivery companies

Here is how Instacart stacks up against competitors on the web …

… and on mobile apps.

Over the past couple of years, Instacart has increased its app user count from 5.8 million in August 2021 to 9.4 million in 2023.

Meanwhile, web traffic has held steady at about the same level instacart.com enjoyed in the pandemic month of August 2020.

Instacart’s advertising portal

Instacart has been diversifying its income streams by selling to advertisers as well as consumers, attracting about 35,000 visitors to ads.instacart.com in August. That’s lower than it was in some past months but about even with year-ago traffic.

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Methodology

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Image by Mohamed Hassan from Pixabay

by David F. Carr

David covers social media, digital advertising, and generative AI. With a background in web trends since the 1990s, he’s also the author of "Social Collaboration for Dummies".