At the DoorDash Ads Summit in New York City, the food delivery giant announced a major expansion of its advertising.
Food On Demand had the opportunity to attend the event and ask executives about their latest ad products and acquisitions.
The big news of the day was the acquisition of Symbiosys, which lets advertisers target audiences across search and social platforms.
The deal was for $175 million, and DoorDash says it will allow it to unify ad placements across platforms where consumers reach them, from social channels like Google, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat, and more.
DoorDash and Symbiosys created an off-site offering for small and medium-sized businesses that advertise on its app, with a model that lets restaurants only pay for those ads when a customer orders from your restaurant.
This also comes as DoorDash recently announced a slew of other acquisitions, including reservation platform SevenRooms and British food-delivery company Deliveroo. It also announced its ad business has hit $1 billion in revenue in three years, with 150,000 advertisers in 30 countries.
DoorDash’s Ads Media Event featured a fireside chat with Tammy Henault, CMO of the NBA and Kofi Amoo-Gottfried, CMO of DoorDash.
Expanding discovery
In an on-site interview, Vassili Samolis, head of product ads at DoorDash, dove into the strategy.
“If you reflect on our own journeys… I find restaurants from friends on social,” said Samolis. “I follow a couple foodie Instagram accounts that help me with discovery. A lot of times it’s on Google Maps, like I’m in the neighborhood and want tacos…”
“Now, the reason behind all of this, I’ll always take it back to the customer. A SMB owner-operator doesn’t have a marketing team. They need to rely on someone to grow. Pre-transaction, they’d come to DoorDash, use all our cool products, but growth was constrained in the app.
“What Symbiosys will help us do is take that advertising message for SMBs and take it everywhere, meet consumers where they are. That could be Pinterest, Snapchat, Facebook. That’s a very restaurant-oriented lens. But then you can take that same playbook to everyone — national CPG brands like Pepsi or retailers.”
With the launch of Smart Targeting and Smart Campaigns, DoorDash is adding new AI-powered tools to its ad platform.
Smart targeting
DoorDash explained how, say you’re a pizza restaurant, but you have really good chicken wings. “We’ve built the ability for you to go out and actually target customers who love ordering chicken wings.”
This is done by tapping real-time data like customer taste, time of day, and past orders to optimize promotions.
Smart campaigns
Restaurants set goals and budgets, and AI creates and manages the campaigns.
Features include interest targeting to help restaurants grow in specific food categories, insights to compare performance against competitors, a report builder to track ad spend across channels, and financial reconciliation tools.
Brands can also leverage sponsored brand enhancements like new ad formats (video, images, and carousels), and global sponsored product ads, first launching with alcohol and expanding to other verticals.
What it means
DoorDash’s big ad push shows how delivery apps are becoming full-on media platforms. As ads move onto places like Instagram and Google, the line between shopping, marketing, and discovery keeps blurring. For restaurants and brands, growth isn’t just about what you sell, it’s where and how people find it.
