Grubhub Grows its Marketing Platform with New Advertising Placements for Merchants and Brands

October 23, 2024

Since our earliest days in 2004, Grubhub’s mission has been to help connect consumers to nearby merchants, while giving these merchants a platform to grow their businesses. We’ve done this through our Grubhub Marketplace, which is a marketing platform at its core that gives our more than 375,000 merchant partners access to tens of millions of consumers across the country looking for takeout. We provide our merchant partners with a variety of marketing packages to choose from depending on their business goals, and they only pay when they generate orders on our Marketplace. Today, we’re expanding how merchants and brands can use Grubhub as an advertising channel.

Grubhub Pre-Checkout Ads for Merchants
We frequently hear that our merchant partners are looking for more control and flexibility over how their business shows up on the Grubhub Marketplace. They want to reach more people at the earliest point in the decision-making process and add incremental value throughout the customer experience. With Grubhub Ads, they can now run and manage listings on the homepage, search results list and cuisine category page to reach more customers throughout the ordering process.

Differing from our existing sponsored listings that Grubhub manages for merchants as an add-on to our Premium marketing package, these new ad placements give all partners, regardless of their marketing package, control over the frequency, location and targeting of their ads.

Powered by Koddi, Grubhub Ads are managed within the merchant’s portal in Grubhub for Restaurants. Merchants can choose their audience, the dates and times the ad will run, the duration of the ads and their monthly budget. Once the ad is live, they can edit, pause or end the campaign at any time and they only pay when customers click on their listing.

“We’re a newer restaurant in our area, and with all of the competing restaurants around us, it’s important that we are able to advertise our restaurant so that we attract customers and gain visibility on the Grubhub Marketplace. Since running ads on Grubhub, our sales are up 30 to 40 percent, and that’s just in the summer alone. As we get into fall and winter when people tend to order out more, I know we will see even greater results.” — Cindy Lech, co-owner of Lenoxthai, a Thai restaurant on the Upper East Side in NYC

“I’m a big believer of advertising, especially in a city like New York where there’s no shortage of restaurants and you have people coming and going at all times. In order for people to notice your restaurant, you better be in one of the top 10 placements. Since running ads on Grubhub, I’ve seen a 15 to 20 percent increase in orders, and it’s a huge plus to know if a customer is new or returning. Having a 4 or 4.5 star rating on Grubhub and the ability to run ads keeps you on top. I don’t think it gets any better than that.” — Edon Vokshi, owner of Pizzeria L’ Antica in NYC

Post-Checkout Ads for Brands
Tens of millions of customers use Grubhub regularly, and they eagerly pay attention to our delivery confirmation and tracking page as they wait for their order to arrive. Now in partnership with Rokt, we’re offering consumer brands access to market to this captive audience of customers on Grubhub’s order tracking page. Through Rokt’s AI technology, brands can showcase relevant and non-intrusive offers to Grubhub’s customers at a time when they are highly engaged (post-checkout) with offers that range from cash back and rewards to fitness memberships, video, music and audio subscriptions, and more.

“As a marketplace with tens of millions of customers, we’re excited to give merchants and brands more opportunities to grow their business through Grubhub,” said Kyle Emmett, senior director of retail media and merchant solutions at Grubhub. “These new advertising tools are a natural extension of our long-standing efforts to make Grubhub an effective marketing channel for our merchant partners to acquire more consumers and a further step to reach our full potential as an advertising channel.”

These new tools for merchants and brands complement Grubhub’s existing suite of marketing capabilities for merchant partners. By selecting from our range of marketing packages, merchants unlock access to promotions, loyalty and promoted placements and receive actionable information about their business through Order Frequency Insights. These tools allow merchants to better target customers to strategically grow their sales while giving them visibility into what’s performing well across different customer segments.

For more information on how to get started with ads, please visit here.