Chicory’s 2024 Outlook: Grocery, Recipe and Contextual Commerce Trends
Chicory Milestones, Grocery Trends and Advertising Predictions Shaping 2024
As we enter 2024, online grocery shopping activity remains strong, with consumers displaying a particular interest in digital meal planning and online recipes. Over the past year, this trend created significant opportunities for Chicory and the entire grocery industry. In this blog, we will delve into these opportunities, highlighting key milestones for Chicory in 2023, along with the consumer and industry trends that we are closely monitoring in 2024.
Chicory Growth Milestones From 2023
In 2023, Chicory reached new heights and celebrated a decade in business. We forged partnerships with new retailers and publishers, launched new products into beta, attracted national attention and influenced trends in grocery retail.
Our Digital Recipe Network Expanded
The Chicory team was thrilled to continue expanding our network of recipe publishers and creators in 2023. Chicory’s network now spans over 5,200 food blogs and recipe sites, with notable additions including Food52, Hearst and Warner Bros. Discovery.
These new partnerships, coupled with robust consumer engagement, led to a 30% year-over-year (YoY) increase in total recipe views across Chicory’s network.
As Chicory’s recipe views and engagement have grown, so has the effectiveness of our contextual advertising solutions for brands, retailers and publishers. From monetizing food blogs to powering in-recipe ads for CPGs, like Pre-Brands, we are creating more opportunities to connect interested readers with new meal ideas and purchase inspiration.
We Linked Up With New Retailers and RMN Partners
On the retailer side, Chicory added approximately a dozen new options for shoppers in our network, reaching over 70 retailer integrations and partnerships (and counting). Notably, the team established new relationships with leading grocery retailers, including a two-part partnership with Giant Eagle and its Retail Media Network, Leap Media Group, along with a partnership with Albertsons.
This was a strong year for these retailers to come aboard: the platform witnessed an 87.5%YoY increase in add-to-carts (ATCs).
We Launched Four New Innovative Ad Products into Beta
The product team at Chicory launched four innovative ad products into beta in 2023, namely Chicory Aisle, Chicory Portfolio, Chicory Reach and Chicory Print. All four products leverage Chicory’s proprietary contextual recipe targeting and enable brands to reach active shoppers beyond the recipe card and across the broader recipe page — thereby boosting incremental return on advertising spend (iROAS).
Additionally, Chicory made significant strides in democratizing its data. For publishers, we introduced our first self-service insights and reporting platform, named Partner Portal. Publishers can easily access performance data through this user-friendly platform, empowering them to analyze and optimize recipe card performance. Creators, like food bloggers, can anticipate access to this feature in the first half of this year.
We also developed our own database of campaign insights that our team can leverage to anticipate and optimize the performance of future campaigns based on previous executions, providing added value to CPG clients.
We Were Recognized by the Industry for Our Technology and Leadership
As more retailers and media sites adopt Chicory’s contextual advertising solutions, our company gains national recognition. Chicory was honored with a spot on both the Inc. Magazine Regionals 2023: Northeast list and the Inc. Magazine 5000 2023 list, which highlight the fastest-growing private companies in the Northeast and in America, respectively.
In the grocery and retail sector, CRO Meghan Howard won two industry accolades, “Progressive Grocer: Top Women in Grocery 2023” and “P2PI: Women of Excellence 2023.” COO Joey Petracca also won a P2PI Retail Media Award, recognizing Chicory’s contributions to retail media and contextual commerce. These honors reflect the hard work and dedication of the entire Chicory team, who are committed to providing best-in-class service and solutions to clients.
Industry Trends for 2024
As a data-driven team, Chicory regularly conducts surveys to understand how online grocery shopping habits have evolved. In 2023 and looking ahead to 2024, we have confirmed that online recipes play an increasingly influential role in everyday shopping and meal planning. Moreover, consumers are now more comfortable than ever with purchasing groceries online.
Convenience-Driven Online Grocery Shopping Activity Will Continue To Rise
The 2023 Chicory Online Grocery Shopping Report indicates that while the rate of online grocery adoption has slowed, online grocery activity and consumer comfort with digital tools have increased.
Why? Consumers crave convenience. When the pandemic hit, online grocery shopping became mainstream, and the initial surge in adoption was sky-high. However, nearly four years later, many who initially turned to online grocery shopping out of necessity continue to do so for the convenience it brings to their lives. In fact, 74% of consumers state that convenience is the number one driver of ordering groceries online.
This positive perception of online grocery shopping directly impacts usage frequency. Today, 7 in 10 consumers shop online for groceries at least once a week, making it an integral part of their weekly routines.
Consumers Will Rely Heavily on Online Recipes for Meal Planning
In the 2023 State of Online Recipes Report, Chicory found that the vast majority (88%) of consumers use online recipes today, and 54% are using online recipes more now than they were one year ago.
Recipes prove particularly helpful to consumers during key holidays and busy seasons like Thanksgiving. In 2023, recipe views increased by 52% YoY across Chicory’s network during this festive period, as consumers scoured the internet for the perfect turkey or green bean casserole recipe
Given today’s challenging economic landscape, we expect this trend to continue into 2024 and beyond, as more consumers turn to home cooking as a cost-saving solution. Brands can capture the attention of these price-conscious consumers with a focus on budget-friendly, time-saving recipes for busy families or single professionals — whether they choose to build their own library of recipes or place contextual, in-recipe ads on existing food blogs.
Contextual, In-Recipe Advertising Will Drive Growth for CPG Brands
Recipes don’t just inspire consumers — they drive commerce for brands. The 2023 P2PI Contextual Commerce Shopper Study found that 85% refer to online recipes while shopping or making their grocery lists, and 90% of consumers have purchased ingredients for an online recipe in-store in the past three months. This makes contextual, in-recipe advertising an extremely effective way to drive incremental sales, both online and in-store.
Even if awareness, not sales, is your goal, contextual, in-recipe advertising delivers: 79% say seeing an ad for a grocery item or ingredient within an online recipe results in a positive overall impression of the brand. Furthermore, 78% of consumers, after seeing a brand in a contextual, in-recipe ad, will remember the brand next time they’re shopping and consider purchasing from that brand.
Why? Consumers are increasingly fatigued by irrelevant ads disrupting their experiences. A contextual commerce strategy aligns with this sentiment, allowing retailers and CPGs to enhance brand sentiment by presenting ads within logical contexts. For instance, an ad for Dijon mustard placed within a sandwich recipe offers a more seamless experience compared to displaying the same ad on a user's personal Facebook feed.
More Advertisers Will Invest in Contextual Commerce To Bolster and Future-Proof Their Strategies
In 2024, we anticipate widespread adoption of contextual commerce by brands, retailers and retail media networks (RMNs). As demonstrated earlier, this strategy proves highly effective in engaging new and lapsed shoppers and influencing key metrics such as iROAS. Even more compelling in today’s landscape, amid the deprecation of third-party cookies, this strategy relies on zero consumer data to inform targeting, making it the only true privacy-conscious alternative to third-party cookies in the market.
Unlike traditional methods reliant on first or third-party data, contextual commerce employs keyword targeting to strategically place hyper-relevant ads where consumers actively seek shopping inspiration. Contextual targeting’s unique ability to reach consumers at scale, while catering to their privacy concerns (as 40% of consumers are concerned about online data privacy), makes it a critical strategy to include in advertisers’ toolkits this year.
→ Look out for Chicory and Industry Dive’s upcoming report in 2024 on how contextual commerce is a win-win for food brands as the world pivots from third-party cookies. Subscribe to our newsletter here to be notified when it’s available.
Retail media networks (RMNs) aiming to scale in the coming year stand to benefit significantly from diversifying their tactics and integrating contextual commerce too. As mentioned earlier, Leap Media Group took the initiative in 2023 by expanding its portfolio to include Chicory's contextual advertising solutions, helping its clients target shoppers beyond the platform. We expect other RMNs to follow suit as CPGs seek more advanced offerings from their RMN partners.
2024: The Year of Reaching High-Intent Shoppers at Scale — Without Third-Party Cookies
Online grocery shopping and meal planning have become routine for the average American. In 2024, we predict that cost-conscious and convenience-loving consumers will continue cooking at home and shopping online. Meanwhile, CPG brands and grocery retailers will be eager for privacy-conscious advertising solutions that effectively reach these audiences.
Catering to both consumer preferences and brand interests, contextual, in-recipe advertising presents itself as a critical advertising strategy for 2024. Reach out to hello@chicory.co to get started today.