INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Where there is discovery in an app, there is paid discovery
Google helped you choose between links, then sold ads that promote a few
Facebook helped you choose between pieces of content, then sold ads that promote a few
And eventually, as Uber helps you choose between restaurants, it will sell ads that promote a few
It could become the marketing platform through which the physical world vies for your attention.
We got our first glimpse of this future
last week when I reported that Uber Eats was offering restaurants in India bonus visibility in a Specials section if they&d offer discounts
on meal bundles to Uber customers
Knock some rupees off the price of a sandwich, fries and a drink, and a restaurant wins itself some enhanced discoverability
Whether a chef wants to boost orders during slow hours, get rid of surplus food, preference high-margin items or just score new customers,
there are plenty of reasons to pay Uber — even if currently only indirectly through discounts instead of a direct ad buy.
But now Uber
senior director and head of Eats product Stephen Chau has confirmed to me the company&sintentions to become an ad company
&There a bunch of different ways we can work with restaurants over time.If we have all the restaurants on the marketplace and we give them
tools to help them grow, then this will be a very efficient marketplace
They&re going to be spending those ad dollars somewhere,& Chau tells me
&One of the things we&ve been experimenting with is allowing retailers to create promotions themselves and show them within the
product.&
Uber Eats test lets restaurants trade discounts for ranking boost
This conversation emerged from TechCrunch spotting Uber latest
effort to influence where people choose to eat.To be worthy of ad dollars, Uber has to build leverage over restaurants by accruing sway over
how people decide between restaurants
And with Uber confidentially filing to go public last week, it needs to prep new revenue streams
So it created what effectively &Uber Eats Pool.&
Gaining leverage with Eats Pool
In response to our inquiry, Uber confirmed it now testing
in some markets a system designed to batch to a single restaurant multiple orders from different customers nearby each other
That way, a single delivery driver can pick up all the orders at once and then speedily distribute them to neighbors or co-workers
Uber must incentivize customers who are close to each other to pick the same restaurant in rapid succession, so it offers a discount.
&$2
off your order — share a courier with a nearby order,& the promotion announces atop the Uber Eats home screen above a carousel of
restaurants where you can grab the discount
It equipped with a countdown timer to when it will refresh the list of restaurants that follows users on an eatery order page
This triggers a sense of urgency to hurriedly buy through Uber Eats (and not check competitors), but also to ensure orders come in close
enough together that the first one cooked won&t have to wait long for the last before they&re all scooped up for delivery.
Some customers
actually play the Uber Eats Pool discounts like a game they can beat, waiting through several rounds of the timer until they spot one of
their favorite restaurants, Chau says with a laugh
For now, passengers don&t ride alongside food orders, though that certainly a possibility in the future
And if Uber Eats can batch your order into a Pool with other customers, it will retroactively give you the discount.
&It similar to what we
did with Uber Pool,& Chau tells me
&Generally people are coming in with an intent to eat but there are many, many options available to them
We&re giving you a discount on the food delivery by using machine learning to understand these are some restaurants it might make sense to
When multiple people order from the same restaurant, delivery drivers can pick up multiple people food.&
Therein lies the leverage
As Stratechery Ben Thompson writes about aggregation theory, internet companies are gaining great influence by becoming marketplaces that
connect customers with suppliers when previously customers preemptively chose a particular supplier
These platforms not only gain enormous amounts of data on customer preferences, but they also hold the power to point customers to certain
suppliers that are willing to play ball.
Uber builds a toll bridge
With all the data, the platforms know just who to show the ads to for a
And over time, as the aggregator perks lure in more customers, it can pit suppliers against each other to further drop their prices or pay
more for ads.Spotify used its own playlists to control which songs became popular, and the artists and record labels became beholden to
cutting it sweeter deals to stay visible
Amazon looks like the best place to shop because it makes merchants fiercely fight to offer the lowest prices and best customer experience
With Uber Eats Pool, Uber is flexing its ability to influence where you eat, training you to trust where it points you when businesses
eventually pay directly to be ranked higher in its app.
&Eats proves the power and potential of the Uber platform, showing how our logistics
expertise can create the easiest way to eat,& Chau tells me
&We partner with a wide selection of restaurants and bring our trademark speed and coverage to the food delivery experience
This feature shows how leveraging the Uber network allows us to offer people even more affordable dining options.& That quote is even more
telling than at first glance
It the logistic network that accrues the power and creates leverage over the supplier to benefit customers with the lowest prices.
&We can
see on Eats how much more business they&re bringing in and how much is incremental new business
Eventually we&ll be able to do very precise targeting
‘People who haven&t tried my restaurant before, let give them a discount,'& Chau tells us
Restaurants are asking him how to grow delivery as a percentage of their orders
&We can see the types of food people are ordering right now but also what they&re searching or are not able to order [because that cuisine
We&re working with them to create new options to fill that gap
They&re able to get much more utilization of their fixed assets and iterate on these concepts much faster than they&re used to.&
Uber
demonstrated the data science it could dangle over restaurants with its review of Uber Eats 2018 trends it published this morning
It predicts clean eating, plant-based foods, smoothie bowls, milk alternatives, fermented items like kimchi and Instagrammably dark &goth
food& will rise in popularity next year
Meanwhile, now-tired social media bait &rainbow-colored foods,& Brussels sprouts and seaweed are on the decline.
It becomes easy to imagine
restaurants running Uber Eats software for tracking order trends and predicting spikes to better manage food and staffing resources, with a
baked-in option to buy ads or give deeper discounts to get seen by more hungry people
Chau concludes, &Restaurants can think of Uber Eats as a platform that gives them this intelligence.&
