DoorDash’s Ads Chief on Planning for Moments Over Audiences

0:00Hello and welcome to Future Commerce, the podcast at the intersection of culture and commerce. I'm Phillip. And I'm Alicia.

0:06Phillip: And DoorDash. For a decade for me, I'm sure for much longer, has been innovating in every single arena. It's been delivering dinner for everybody. And today it's building a retail media business around the everyday moments that turn your needs into a purchase. And speaking of innovation, I mean, there's even announcements this week about all the innovations that DoorDash is bringing. You can read about it on futurecommerce.com. But I think the retail media business is the really interesting part of what is making brands successful today. And DoorDash has just introduced Brandcenter. It's bringing advertising together with insights, product availability, shopper behavior.

0:43Phillip: And here today to talk about it, she is the general manager of CPG ads at DoorDash. And before connecting brands with consumers in those moments, she helped to build them at brands like Klondike and Axe at Unilever and then launching private label at jed.com. Today, she's helping brands to show up where it matters most. Katie DeLeo, welcome to Future Commerce. Thank you for having me. Yeah. What is the most important thing that you're working on right now over at DoorDash and how are you helping brands connect to their audiences? Yeah, there's a lot we're working on. We announced that we are the first retail media network to have AAM certification for our IROAS methodology.

1:25We really have been kind of tinkering with it and solidifying our point of view, making sure we have a really sound methodology and then brought it to market earlier this year when we sort of felt that like we had as thorough of a point of view as we possibly could. And we saw great results. I think on On average, we're seeing over 30 % incremental sales lift for our partners. And then we fast followed with the AAM certification as sort of the cherry on top.

1:55Phillip: Alliance for audited media? Media. So when you're attracting brands, I'm thinking through the brands that you see on DoorDash these days. It's like Skims, Gap, Kohl's, right? Um, when they're, you know, looking at DoorDash as a, as a, you know, marketplace as an, um, to buy media, are they looking at AAM as the differentiating factor? Is that the sort of thing that you feel like is decisive for them? Um, or is that something that you feel like is really important for you as you're coming into the market and the market is crowded and it becomes part of that credentialing? I think it is a very important part of the total equation.

2:40I think, you know, commerce media has kind of emerged as, you know, a derivation of retail media, if you will. And, you know, in the last couple of years, a lot of our brand partners are sort of getting their head around like, what does this mean versus, you know, other channels? And so, So, you know, data, I would say data is the currency we have with CPG partners. And so kind of figuring out the measurement story is really critical, but it's only part of it. The AAM certification and the IROAS methodology is part of the data. We also, you know, have started working with third parties like Serkana and Numerator to like better tell the impact of the of like what DoorDash or investing on DoorDash means for your total investment.

3:29You can get surgical in terms of planning for DoorDash versus other platforms. So data and measurement will always be an important pillar of how we serve our partners. There's a lot of other things that matter to brand partners as they kind of figure out commerce media. One is understanding the audience and then understanding sort of where we fit within our consumers overall kind of shopping patterns. to your point about having like Skims and Gap and other kind of core retail. You know, if I'm Unilever or Pepsi at first, I'm like, well, that doesn't really matter to me. But what it does is it means that DoorDash is driving more value for our consumer.

4:10We're giving them more reasons to come back to the DoorDash platform, which just means that we're continuing to cultivate, you know, a unique and loyal audience. And that is very important to partners as they think about how all these different platforms kind of fit together.

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5:08Phillip: That's getting holiday ready with Walmart Marketplace and 100 % off referral fees. When you use customer favorites, visit marketplace.walmart.com slash futurecommerce. How much do you think your time brand side, and I'm sure a lot's changed over the last, I mean, even just post pandemic, but how much do you think it's informed your current perspective on the development of RMN, CMN? And does that help when you're working with brand partners? You know, I speak CPG and I have a lot of like empathy because I've been on the other side of the table. And so I sort of know sort of the challenges that a brand manager is facing.

5:52That like consumer centricity that you learn at a CPG has been beneficial for me in my role here. I think that coupled with my exposure to consumer tech or UI at Jet have allowed me to come here. And as we think through what products and features we want to build for our partners, it allows me to always also think about the impact on the core consumer at the end of the day. And our philosophy here has very much been if you can find a solution that works for the consumer, it will work for the brand, in which case it will work for DoorDash. And you try to get the win-win-win under product market fit.

6:31And what I find so interesting about the DoorDash business is that that consumer set is so diverse. And it's so firmly based in momentary needs. Like sometimes it's problem-based. Sometimes it's situational. and you guys have done some fascinating research and through partners like Serkana around who's actually using DoorDash and what are those use cases. And what I find interesting is how you can kind of bring those insights into those commerce media-centric conversations. So brands can kind of rise to the occasion, so to speak, and be part of the moment. In context of all that data and insight, I mean, what are you finding about the on-demand shopper today?

7:22Is there anything that brands maybe don't know or insights that are possibly overlooked to really understand this larger context of who this shopper is and I guess mainly the behavioral and psychological aspects that drive them? There's a couple of things there. I think we are finding first and foremost, it's definitely more about the need state than anything else. I think two things that are good to know about what we found about our consumers on DoorDash are, one, they're highly loyal. We have 56 million monthly active users. Nearly two-thirds of them are DashPass users, which have like 50 % plus frequency.

8:00And to the point earlier in the conversation, like the more shopping occasions that we can deliver on, no pun intended, the more reason we have that our consumers will continue to kind of think of DoorDash first as they have a need to fulfill. And then the second piece is that they're open to discovery. We had multiple data points to show this through third parties and our own research. So for example, we did a lot of research around occasions because we know like moments really matter to the DoorDash consumer. And those can be like big moments, you know, like FIFA World Cup was a big one this summer or it can be like smaller moments, like a national food day.

8:37But one, we see increased traffic. And then we see that the consumers that come to the platform, you know, 50 % of them say they're very open to like adding something new to their basket or trying something new. We've also saw like you probably saw the news from grocery shop where we talked about our testing into like a grocery agent. And there we found that like 60 % unique items were unique across baskets. And so there's definitely an immediacy factor. The majority of our deliveries still occur kind of on a need it now basis versus scheduled. But we are finding that once a consumer comes to the app, they're definitely open to being influenced either of how to fulfill said need or to like add incremental items to their basket.

9:24And so I always take it back as like, what does this mean for your, for the brand? And it's, every audience is different. And then the path to purchase or how the consumer shop, each platform is different. And so understanding, you know, discovery versus search and, you know, the path to purchase. We have categories where global search, where non-branded term will drive 10 % of orders. Someone comes and says, hey, I'm having a party. I want to bring beer, but they'll literally just type beer on the DoorDash homepage. And the world is their oyster in terms of what item they actually navigate to.

10:02And so I think it's just really important for brands to understand, one, audience demographics, two, their purchase patterns, and then three, What does that mean for how you can actually show up to win? I kind of want to unpack those layer by layer because I think there are a few different, you know, perspectives to look at this new reality that brands are facing from a creative standpoint. So like the first layer, you kind of talked about those global slash cultural moments. And I actually had the chance to see you and your team speak at the Up Friends earlier in September and saw the session with Cura Dr.

10:37Pepper. I thought that it was a really great case of an established brand really thinking strategically about like, how do we join this conversation around college football? How do we join the moment in an authentic way? What I found interesting is how it got so granular to targeting Gen Z specifically for the college football moment. And I think it really got everyone in the room thinking about, okay, well, how do we design for these cultural moments in context of a shopping experience or app experience where it is so momentary slash needs-based? Are there any key learnings from that particular case that you think are worth calling out?

11:22Some of it comes down to like brass tacks, right? Like understanding what formats work better in certain situations. Like I was, we were laughing, we were talking with my daughter, who's like a tween this weekend about commercials. I was talking about how like they used to be 60 seconds and now most, you know, are at best 15. You know, in our app, consumers come in and it's not a place where they spend three hours, right? It's not like you're scrolling on TikTok or Instagram. And so we've actually found that like videos that are less than six seconds work well. I think it's some of it is very tactical of understanding like the specifications of what work well on different platforms based on the consumer behavior and how they use that platform.

12:08And then I think it's just understanding our audience and that, you know, for Curing Dr. Pepper, you know, a lot of the appeal there was the Gen Z of like bringing Dr. Pepper to this younger audience that, you know, over indexes on our platform. And then the third piece is just figuring out, you know, end to end. So it's understanding like the different formats you're using between offsite, content creation. What is the click through when you get to the app so that it's quick and minimizes friction, but also keeps kind of the brand front and center. So I'd say it's a combination of those three things.

12:42Phillip: You know, back to your old days of planning and thinking about how the funnels change dramatically is, you know, if it's orders, not impressions or clicks that best capture the sales impact, is commerce media ready to be held to the same standard as TV? Like is, are we sort of, is the mentality shifting away? And like how does CTV and other channels and sort of the way that the media environment as a whole evolving that sort of changed the way that the marketer is looking at attribution? Are they looking at it holistically or are they making comparisons in performance to other channels like CTV when looking at CMN?

13:34I would say MMMs is like a conversation we have with a lot of partners, especially as different organizations fund retail media or commerce media differently. So like their internal benchmarks vary across the board. Like we very much believe in the impact that, you know, marketing on DoorDash has. And at the end of the day, any media should be showing impact, but the actual metric or the methodology may need to be different. You know, like MMMs are very much based on impressions and reach. They're very much based on like a longer term view. So in our kind of MMM, Ipsos work, we showed that like most of the impact was actually happened a week after.

14:20We look at incrementality. That's why we did the third party Sarkana study and we're building that muscle in terms of like the impact offline. Yes, like we want to be in the conversation, but there probably needs to be broader discussion around finding a methodology that actually can compare apples to oranges to translate everything into a common currency.

14:45Phillip: Yeah, sure. Do you think this is leading back to the conversation that the marketer, the instinct-driven marketer and not the data and dashboard insights-driven marketer has a place in the modern organization still, right? Yeah, 100%. I think I've actually just seen this even through my career, like it very much used to, you know, when I was at Unilever, it very much felt like, you know, your brand manager, but you're really a general manager, just marketing is your, your tools. And the beauty of being, what I loved about being a brand manager is you got to exercise the right and the left brain, right?

15:18You've got the creative and sort of the more intuitive pieces. And then you also had like the data that helped drive your decisions. Like the 2010s were, it was very much like D to C and it was very much a bifurcation. is it seems to be your brand or your performance and you're one or the other. I think, yeah, now it's kind of needs to be the combination of the two. And I think you're also seeing that even in the conversations we have with brand partners of like who's involved in managing the relationship. We usually find that it's a combination of kind of like a traditional kind of like channel or sales lead and a media person because you can combine those two things together to really like the total impact, you know, like a platform like DoorDash can drive as opposed to looking at purely as one or the other.

16:05Phillip: I've had a couple of conversations with a few people more cynical than I that have also said that that's also just due to collapsing budgets and margin. And like, we're just trying to get more out of, you know, fewer headcount too. But that's, I digress on that. DoorDash has recently unveiled Brandcenter, which is your integrated platform for retailer intelligence. Yeah, I think that's a kind of a good build on sort of the merge of like media and sort of core kind of retail mechanics. But yeah, we pivoted as manager to brand center last week. And it is an evolution that says, you know, if you really want to understand your total business on DoorDash, sales data, and then your ability to run marketing campaigns as part of it, you also understand how some of the basics feed into your performance.

16:55And so we've launched data that shows your on-shelf availability so you understand how you're actually showing up. Yeah. Your assortments, you can understand what SKUs are carried on DoorDash from your partners. There could be X thousands in stores, but maybe not all of them are making it through the app. You can also see how those SKUs show up from a content standpoint in terms of the imagery and the words and all of that, and then have the ability to make edits in real time. And then the last piece is the consumer substitution data. So like real time understanding of the impact of a dash or not being able to find your skew and where does the consumer redirect themselves?

17:42Phillip: If you run operations or fulfillment at a growing brand, you already know this to be true. The customer just does not care where the marketing department ends its journey and the operations team takes over. Because if the order arrives late or maybe tracking is not updating or the unboxing experience does not live up to their expectations, that is a brand level problem. And usually that becomes your problem because that is your job. And Ship Fusion wanted to give operators a better way to understand how their fulfillment experience actually compares to the rest of the market. So they placed and audited hundreds of actual real life DTC orders.

18:22Phillip: And they looked at everything from checkout and shipping to delivery and unboxing. And then they turned all of that research into the DTC fulfillment experience quiz. It's 16 questions. It takes five minutes and it gives you a benchmark for where your operation is strong and where there's a gap for the customer experience that's breaking down for you right now. And let's say that fulfillment is becoming a constraint on your growth. Ship Fusion is giving Future Commerce listeners three months of free fulfillment when you partner with them. I can't think of a better way of getting started on BFCM than doing that right now.

18:57Phillip: So start your journey by banking your operation at shipfusion.com slash futurecommerce. That's shipfusion.com slash futurecommerce. Take the DTC fulfillment experience quiz. 16 questions, five minutes. get a benchmark for where you are and get three months of free fulfillment when you partner with them. But you got to use our link ship fusion.com slash future commerce. Uh, this is the thing that I feel like I should be throwing my hands up and jumping up and down about because to me, there's, this is an entire industry. Like this solves so many problems for retailers. Um, like how do you show up?

19:38Phillip: When are you being substituted? I feel like this is an entire segment of the market that I think can be better served by a workforce that's already out there every day doing something with a phone pointed at it. What's happening right now? This is brilliant. What's the reception been like? It's been strong. I think our brand partners are understanding how to digest the data and then also marry it up with their own. But it's really helpful. I mean, we always get questions on like, what happens with substitutions. Also, it's good for DoorDash, right? Because now we have better intelligence of like, in our app, if I order something, it's not available, like, what's the best, you know, experience for Katie, in terms of a substitution, they're happy to see that we're able to kind of give them the full picture of DoorDash as not just, a platform you can advertise on, but a retail platform that has a cross retailer view into like your ecosystem.

20:39And what I find really interesting about that point, Katie, is that at the top of our conversation, you mentioned how incredibly loyal the DoorDash user is. So it's like when those moments of tension or disconnect happen where they have a particular need or they're building their list and there is that fork in the road, so to speak, of do you want a replacement item or do you want a refund? I think it was something like 40 % of shoppers ask for a refund instead of just a substitute, right? So it's almost like this data is helping create that closed loop experience, so to speak. So people can continue on that journey with DoorDash and then ultimately with the brand because there's that data now, there's that insight to kind of help close that loop.

21:23Yeah, 100%. We find that about a third of consumers kind of have a specific item in mind when they're building a basket. And so that in my mind, anyway, that math kind of makes sense that like roughly 40 % won't do a substitution. I even think like when I like place orders, you know, there's like the one skew of gummies my daughter will eat. And if they don't have it, I don't want to even like say, exactly. It's all, it's that or bust. It also just is that intelligence that you can come back and say, you know, real-time data that validates reported you're getting elsewhere that probably isn't as timely and you can make quick corrections.

22:01Right. And then if you have an ad that kind of alludes to a specific product or campaign, and then there's, again, there's that disconnect, then it's kind of turning that moment of opportunity into a dead end, so to speak. I always come back to like the consumer and their experience. We're driving a lot of our existing restaurant base into the, it's called the grocery and convenience for consumables categories. About just north of like a third of our monthly active users are now shopping what we call new verticals, which is all things retail. And so I think discovery is really, you know, as we're bringing a lot more new consumers into the experience, it makes sense that they're discovering, right?

22:40They want to understand like, what do we offer and what can I get from DoorDash? And so that, again, all comes back to knowing the routines and who we're serving and who's coming to shop on DoorDash versus other platforms, because the why is different and the why is what offers brands the opportunity. Yeah. Because DoorDash is expanding its customer base, like you mentioned, into new verticals, a lot more apparel, mass retailer. So So I guess all of this insight is the foundation to kind of building out not just the opportunity for the consumer to shop more verticals, but how does that play into like the advertising side, like the vision for what the commerce media side of the business can be or possibly should be, knowing that all of these new verticals and new brands?

23:32I think for brands, like the part of our job to be done on the DoorDash side is understanding how, you know, telling a story for soda is probably very different than telling a story for beauty. I imagine a lot of the retail categories, like moments are even more impactful in terms of when you see sort of consumer interest peak. So, you know, we'll be, you know, kind of figuring out the retail side as we continue to expand there. I think for brands, if you're a soda brand, you don't have necessary distribution at a lot of these specialty retailers, but it's just one potential consumer or audience insights of understanding affinities and whatnot.

24:16Not exactly the same thing, but a cool product we launched earlier this year is dish targeting, where we can actually leverage the orders. You know, if we know, Alicia, you come to DoorDash and you love breakfast burritos, we can have actually been able to show that, you know, folks who like breakfast burritos over index on XYZ categories. Right. And so there's definitely an opportunity to kind of look at purchase patterns across the different verticals on DoorDash and see what insights that bubbles up for brands.

24:49Phillip: This has been so great, Katie. You now serve over 400 ,000 advertisers on the platform. We usually ask what the future looks like. You're creating the future over there at DoorDash. But what is your outlook on the space for the next year? How do you think you're going to be playing a part in this industry with all these new launches? We had like a saying of intimacy at scale. Like how do you take like a big national brand and do it at scale? I think of DoorDash as a platform that allows you to do local commerce at scale. And then in addition to continuing to refine the formats and capabilities that we offer, I think, especially in an age of AI, and I'm like shocked that we made it through this.

25:37I do think we can simplify how everything works together will be sort of a critical job to be done. And I think kind of a key insight for us, at least on the CPG side, has been we need to simplify. We need to make it easier. But you also still need to give brands a certain level of control. And I think that kind of recipe and formula is going to drive a lot of what we do in the short to midterm.

26:02Phillip: Ooh, I like that a lot. Yeah, I love it. This has been such a great conversation. Congrats on everything. Thank you so much. And Katie DeLeo, the GM at the CBG Ads at the DoorDash business. Find out more at ads.doordash.com. We'll link it up in the show notes. Thank you all for watching this episode of Future Conversations. Sparks something for you. Like, follow, subscribe. Wherever you get your podcasts, it helps more people join the conversation. If you want to bring more of Future Commerce into your world, we have a whole slew of books, actual, physical, real-life print. That's right. atoms are, I think, a lot more valuable than electrons that rot in your inbox.

26:36Phillip: You can get out or print shop at futurecommerce.com. That's where commerce meets culture in beautiful crafted journals, zines, print collectibles. And remember, commerce shapes the future because commerce is culture. We'll see you next time.