Where Do Product Images Come From?

We recently published an article about product images on Instacart. If you’re up to speed, read on to learn more about the Library and why some of your products may not appear there.

Let’s say you are in the Library page of Instacart’s Ads Manager and you’re ready to update your product images or details, but you notice that some of your products aren’t showing up. Or maybe you’re actually seeing more products than you should, and some of the products in your feed don’t belong to you. Below, we’ll explain where these products come from, what to do if products are missing and what adding or removing a product really means. 

How does the Library pull in products? 

Our Library pulls in the products that we see are “mapped” to your brand. What this means is that we works with thousands of stores, serving real-time in-stock reports for tens-of-thousands of store locations. We categorize the products sold by retailers and then we map out a hierarchy to know which products belong to which brands.

While this mapping has no impact on your ability to appear on Instacart’s customer-facing applications and websites, this mapping does help ensure that brands aren’t competing against themselves when advertising. This mapping process is an internal advantage that also allows us to provide brand-specific insights. The products that appear in your Library are the products that are linked to your brand. 

If your brand or specific products are newer to market, they may not yet be mapped in our existing hierarchy. 

How do I add or remove a product?

If there are products that are missing from your library, you can add additional products by clicking the “add more products” button in the top right corner. To add the product, click that button, then type the UPCs of the missing products using a 12-digit UPC code into the box.

You can add multiple products at a time by typing each UPC on a new line. If you want to remove a product, you can click the trash icon next to any product. 

Once you submit any additions or removals of products from the library, an Instacart representative will review your submitted changes. After that, Instacart will notify you if your addition or removal was accepted or rejected. 

What does adding a product really mean?

Adding a product in the Library does not mean that the product will be added to a retailer’s product listing. If the UPC isn’t added by the retailer to its catalog, you won’t be able to add the product. The UPC has to first appear in the in-store listings — and this is up to the retailer.

Therefore, adding a UPC will only add the product into your Library so you can edit the imagery and product information. It will also bring the UPC into your future insights and data mapping.

What does removing a product really mean? 

Similar to adding a product to your library, removing a product will not remove the product from a retailer’s catalog on Instacart. The retailer is the only one who can add or remove products from its in-store listing. 

Therefore, removing a UPC will only remove it from your Library and from your future insights and data mapping. 

What happens if my addition/removal of a product is rejected? 

If your product addition or removal is rejected, it’s because the product is currently being mapped to an existing brand. Please follow up with your sales representative for next steps. 

Removing a product may take several weeks. 

If you have any questions about how your products appear in the Library, you can reach out to your Instacart representative. In the meantime, for more best practices and 101 content to help you become an expert at using Instacart Ads Manager, stay tuned for the next blog post on the Ads blog, which will talk more about product image approval.

Instacart

Instacart is the leading grocery technology company in North America, partnering with more than 1,400 national, regional, and local retail banners to deliver from more than 80,000 stores across more than 14,000 cities in North America. To read more Instacart posts, you can browse the company blog or search by keyword using the search bar at the top of the page.