The short answer
Zepto is a quick commerce (QComm) app. Brands advertise on it through a brand ads portal. You choose what to promote, where and for how much. Shoppers then see your product marked as an ad, next to organic results.
Agency pages for this query describe a wider job than the ads alone. They cover catalog quality, dark-store stock, city coverage and weekly reporting too. We agree. An ad only works if the product is listed and on the shelf nearby.
The ad products
Sponsored Products. Your product shows in search results for a keyword, and in other spots such as product pages. You pay per click. This is the core product for most brands. You can raise bids for the best placements and limit ads to certain hours.
Sponsored Display. Banners and product displays on the home screen and category pages. These are bought on reach, not per click.
Sponsored Brands. A keyword carousel, plus premium slots such as pre-search and cart placements. Premium slots are booked ahead by date and hour, through Zepto. They can sell out.
Ads only run for products that are in your Zepto ads catalogue, so a brand with no live listing has nothing to advertise.
How a campaign is set up
- Pick the products. Only products that are listed and in stock should be promoted.
- Pick keywords. The portal suggests keywords near your own catalogue, in two groups: rival brands and generic terms. It shows a search count and a suggested bid for each.
- Pick cities, dates and a budget.
- Set bids. Each keyword has a bid.
- Submit, then watch. The work is day to day, not monthly.
What makes the spend work
Stock. An ad on a product that is out of stock in a dark store spends money and sells nothing. See on-shelf availability in quick commerce.
Position. Ads earn most on the first screen of results. If your product already holds that spot organically, an ad adds less.
The right keywords. Some search results show a different kind of product from yours. Ads there rarely convert.
City by city. Search results and stock differ by store, so a national average can hide a problem in one city.
Measuring. Ad reports show what the ads earned. Total sales on Zepto are not visible to every brand, so market-wide sales are estimates from a daily crawl.
What to ask a Zepto ads agency
- Will you run campaigns inside our own Zepto account?
- How do you decide which keywords are worth buying?
- How do you stop spend on products that are out of stock?
- Do you count organic position, or only paid?
- What will the weekly report show? Can we see a sample?
- Who is our contact, and who also handles Blinkit and Instamart?
More in how to choose a Blinkit ads agency, which applies to Zepto too.
How Netr works
Netr's Managed Ads runs your Zepto campaigns inside your own account. Bids are checked through the day against your first-scroll rules, using the daily view of the shelf from Digital Shelf, so spend follows stock and position. See Zepto ads, how Instamart ads work and how Blinkit ads work.