Instacart Launches Data Hub Clean Room for Retail Media Planning
Instacart has officially unveiled “Data Hub,” a clean room solution designed to help brands and their agency partners combine their own data with Instacart’s first-party grocery signals to improve media planning, activation and measurement.
Unveiled at CES on Jan. 6, Data Hub provides a secure, privacy-safe environment where marketers can join customer data with Instacart purchase behavior/signals to unlock deeper insights, build custom audiences for off-platform activation and measure omnichannel performance.
“Retail media data is increasingly essential to enhance targeting, optimization and measurement for omnichannel media activations,” Ali Miller, general manager of advertising at Instacart, said in a news release. “Brands and agencies are eager for easier access to trusted, scaled sources of purchase data. We’ve designed the Instacart Data Hub to provide partners with a deeper understanding of shopping behavior and a practical way to apply those insights to their marketing strategies.”
Turning Grocery Data Into Actionable Media Signals
Powered by real purchase behavior across the Instacart Marketplace, Data Hub gives advertisers visibility into metrics such as lifetime value, new-to-brand shoppers and repurchase frequency. The clean room enables brands to analyze behavioral patterns and product affinities while maintaining data privacy protections.
With Data Hub, advertisers can:
- Join first-party brand data with Instacart’s grocery purchase signals in a secure environment.
- Build custom audience segments for activation across channels.
- Analyze shopping behavior and product affinities across the Instacart Marketplace.
- Measure campaign performance using flexible attribution approaches.
Instacart said the tool has been in pilot with select agencies and CPGs and will roll out to additional partners throughout 2026.
Agency, Platform Partners Weigh In
Agency and tech partners positioned Data Hub as a response to growing demand for privacy-safe data collaboration as retail media expands beyond on-platform placements.
“[Instacart’s] introduction of Data Hub capabilities reflects the growing demand in our industry for privacy-safe data environments and new approaches to audience targeting and measurement strategies,” Lauren Lavin, executive director, North America commerce at WPP Media, said in the release.
Melissa Burdick, president and co-founder of Pacvue, pointed to the fragmentation of consumer discovery across platforms as a key challenge the tool aims to address.
“Shoppers now discover products everywhere — on social, in streaming, through [large language models (LLMs)] and across retailers,” Burdick said. “It's a big step forward for the industry.”
Expanding Instacart’s Data Capabilities
Data Hub builds on Instacart’s broader investment in data and insights tools for advertisers. In 2025, the company launched its Consumer Insights Portal, a self-serve analytics tool that gives advertisers visibility into real-time shopping trends and consumer behavior.
Data Hub extends those capabilities by enabling customizable analysis and direct application of insights to media planning, audience activation and measurement.
Together, the tools underscore Instacart’s growing retail media investment, particularly as clean rooms become an increasingly important part of the ecosystem.
