Sponsored listings and self-serve boosts iFood monthly ad revenue by 20x

What iFood Wanted

Since iFood was founded in 2011, it has grown into Latin America’s largest restaurant delivery service, with more than 80% market share over the Brazilian food delivery sector. In 2023, iFood serviced over 40 million monthly users and worked alongside 330,000 restaurants and 200,000 delivery drivers. iFood’s impact on the Brazilian economy is also substantial, with a contribution of $97B in gross production value, according to a 2022 survey by FIPE (Economic Research Institute Foundation). 

But such high demand doesn’t just happen: creating quality experiences for diners, restaurants, and brands has always been a top priority for iFood. To continue delivering excellence, the iFood team wanted to upgrade and scale their promoted listings feature across multiple areas of their app, reaching even more diners throughout Brazil.

The iFood team also needed to expand on their existing in-house self-serve solution -- they needed scalable ad serving infrastructure that could be built on top of their existing investment, without an overcomplicated integration process. 

Kevel’s APIs offered the flexibility iFood needed to launch iFood Ads, a venture which has grown iFood’s monthly Food Delivery Ad revenue by 1900% in just one year. iFood’s Kevel-powered ad units: 

• Have high demand and are able to scale. 
• Support advertiser partnerships and increase transparency through a robust self-service UI. 
• Deliver dynamic ads that improve user experience across iFood’s Home, Category, and Search Results pages. 
• Streamline ad decision requests through Ad Query’s Auction as a Service. 
• Integrate seamlessly, with the iFood team praising Kevel as a “plug-and-play” solution. 

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The Challenge

Before their partnership with Kevel, the iFood team was manually running their promoted listings business with an internal ad server that didn’t allow for dynamic, stand-out promoted listings. Although iFood’s technical team was able to launch an in-house self-serve system, this solution had a low adoption rate and wasn’t built to scale. At the time, iFood was only serving ads in one placement.

With a monthly audience in the tens of millions, iFood’s team knew they were capable of more; they wanted to empower restaurants and brands to engage effectively with their millions of users by delivering the right ads at the right time. Key ad serving functions, like pacing and targeting, became essential for iFood’s advertisers to effectively reach their target diners. iFood needed a way to deliver this functionality alongside important metrics like conversions and performance to advertisers -- without sacrificing everything they’d already built. 

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The Solution

Kevel’s flexible ad serving APIs meant the iFood team didn’t have to scrap their previous investments and internal tooling. Kevel offered a platform that iFood could build on top of their existing infrastructure, while still consolidating their data and ad demand. This allowed the iFood team to maintain total control over their ad serving solution, empowering them to deliver ads that meet their high demand and bring more value to advertisers. 

Currently, iFood maximizes these Kevel offerings: 

• Kevel promoted listings
• Dynamic category based targeting
• Ad pacing
• Real-time reporting
• Management API powering their self-serve portal

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The Impact: What Kevel Delivered

Flexible APIs 

Kevel’s API-based tools gave the iFood team a flexible ad serving solution that helped them grow their monthly Food Delivery Ad revenue by 1900% in the span of a year. Working with Kevel meant that iFood didn’t have to forfeit any control over their data, while still being able to streamline their ad management and build upon an existing in-house solution. This way, iFood can keep important user information like location, order history, custom event data, ad serving and preferences within their control for better targeting and optimization.

Kevel’s API-first infrastructure also provided seamless integration, similar to other “plug-and-play” or off-the-shelf solutions, while preserving a zero-touch approach to data and avoiding a revenue-sharing model. Partnering with Kevel allowed iFood to scale effectively and quickly, all while optimizing their existing solution and maintaining control over their data.

“Kevel has enabled us to rapidly scale, growing monthly iFood Delivery ad revenue by 20x in a single year, and empowering this product to become one of the main EBITDA levers for the company.” 
- Lucas Sampaio, Senior Business Intelligence Analyst at iFood

Dynamic sponsored ads 

Before Kevel, the iFood team’s internal ad server didn’t allow for dynamic, eye-catching ads. To provide the best possible experience for both diners and advertisers, iFood wanted to upgrade the look and location of their sponsored listings. 

Currently, Kevel powers iFood’s promoted listings across the app’s home, category, and search pages -- upping iFood’s ad placements from just one to six. This significant increase in ad placements played a key role in iFood’s hugely profitable ad business, alongside other Kevel features like adQuery, which provided highly targeted and relevant promoted listings within each page.

Full ad tech ownership 

With such massive reach and an existing self-serve solution, owning their tech stack and data was important to the iFood team. Kevel’s API offerings upgraded their own self-serve while still allowing iFood to efficiently leverage their data, delivering the right ads, at the right time, to their audience of millions.

With Kevel, iFood launched their ad platform in 2023 and had an astronomical 1900% increase in monthly ad revenue.

A future-proof ad solution

Kevel provided iFood with the infrastructure they needed to build an ad platform that worked best for them and their audience. Owning and managing their own Kevel-powered ad platform enables the iFood team to meet their existing demand while also providing the path for them to successfully scale over time.

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What’s Next? 

Kevel’s APIs haven’t just met iFood’s priorities, but provided the instrumental infrastructure required for the food delivery platform’s rapid expansion and vision for the future. Kevel’s self-serve infrastructure supports iFood’s existing internal tools while still providing a more efficient, and effective, ad serving platform. 

Want to seize control of your own ad platform like the iFood team? Learn more about building an ad platform with Kevel or get in touch with us today.