Glovo scales up their ad platform to 1000+ vendors in less than 3 months.

February 23, 2023

2 min read
Industry:
Delivery App
Location:
Solution:

Active Vendors Growth

54x

ROAS

5.8X

Daily Ad Spend Growth

+35x
Leading delivery app Glovo launches their dream media ads platform and easily scales up to 40x vendors in 3 months with custom-built tools and features from Topsort.

"Topsort delivered exactly what we needed in a partner - a flexible, API-based solution that delivered top value for our advertisers, met our unique needs as an advertising platform and they delivered it FAST!"

Rory O'Rourke - Head of Product, Ads at Glovo

Scaling a retail media platform is hard! For Glovo it wasn’t. Here’s the story of how Glovo scaled their ad business from 20 vendors to 1000+ vendors in 5+ countries in less than 3 months. 

Owned by Delivery Hero, Glovo is the leading Spanish delivery app that operates in 25 countries and more than 1,500 cities in Europe with +150k merchants online, Western Asia, and Africa. As a delivery app, there’s not much Glovo can’t get for you (as long as it fits in a courier bag). In addition to food delivery from local restaurants, Glovo couriers can bring you anything you need from your local florist, electronics store, supermarket, or fashion store. Basically, you order anything you wish to have and Glovo delivers it to you, fast!

Glovo makes the life of people easy by giving them a flexible platform that addresses their needs. It would only make sense if Glovo decided to work with a retail media solution partner which had a similar approach. A platform that, in addition to having an assortment of useful and thoughtful tools, delivers the tools and features that Glovo wanted to have. Topsort was the right choice to turn Glovo’s vision for the ultimate ad platform into reality.

Glovo Ads: A Story of Scaling Up

Launching an auction-based advertising platform with Topsort is easy. You can launch a full-media platform within 2-3 weeks using our self-service platform or custom build your own ad business using Topsort’s APIs and tools. Glovo opted for the latter.

The launch of Glovo Sponsored Listings was seamless. Glovo started with around 20 vendors and let them launch effective and high-ROAS sponsored listings campaigns for about 10 days. The initial results were highly positive! Restaurants, supermarkets, and other Glovo vendors were happy with Glovo Ads and the campaigns they created were bringing them 5x ROAS. 

Glovo’s team decided it was time to hit the gas and scale up their ad platform! 

Speed is the core of Glovo’s business, so it wasn’t a surprise for us to see how Glovo recorded one of the fastest growth among our partners. 

In less than 3 months, Glovo crossed 1000 active vendors with a 40x vendor growth rate! An onboarding pace we have not seen before and it doesn’t seem to be slowing anytime soon. During the same period, the average ROAS remained high around 5-7x even with the high number of new vendors advertising thanks to high conversion rates. The performance of these campaigns, attracted new vendors who are eager for the results performance-based placements bring, boosting the daily ad spend to more than 35 times.

Topsort’s autobidding algorithm also plays a key role as Glovo keeps scaling up its ad business as it’s the simplest way for - vendors to launch more than 3,000 effective and high-ROAS ad campaigns even as first-timers.

The Glovo’s user-friendly interface and effective campaigns powered by Topsort proved to be particularly appealing to restaurants, supermarkets, and groceries, who were able to create and manage their campaigns with ease while targeting the ideal customers in their service radius. Conversion rates were around 10% thanks to relevant sponsored listings Glovo users were seeing. 

Custom-Built Tools from A True Partner

Topsort’s simplified platform and modular APIs enable marketplaces, apps, and communities to build, scale, and optimize their own advertising businesses. With Topsort you never compromise and Glovo has the proof!

As Glovo was enjoying the growth of their ad business, they needed new features and tools to truly have the dream ads platform they wanted. With a true partnership mentality, we developed new APIs, built some tools, implemented features, and made improvements to give Glovo run their ad business on their own terms, in a way that perfectly matches their business.

Thanks to the success of their newly launched auction-based advertising business, Glovo was able to strengthen relationships with their vendors by giving them a new marketing channel that had unmatched returns. While providing value for vendors, Glovo also generated additional and scalable revenue. Glovo plans to continue expanding the ad platform to new cities and countries while constantly adding new features to help more vendors and brands reach their desired audience.

You can also build and scale your auction-based advertising business that unlocks new revenue streams. If you want a partner that’s always on your side and makes your retail media journey a success, get in touch with us today!