Guide · Ads intelligence
How do sponsored results work on quick commerce apps?
Where paid slots appear on a results page, how much of the page they take, and what can and cannot be known about them from outside.
Type a word into a quick commerce app and the list that comes back holds two kinds of result. Most are there because the app ranked them. Some are there because a brand paid, and the app marks those on the page with a label such as “Ad” or “Sponsored”. This guide is about the second kind: where they sit, how many there are, and what can be known about them without anyone’s ad account.
Where a paid slot appears
In the reads behind this page we saw paid slots in two places on a search:
- Inside the results. A paid result sits in the same list as the unpaid ones and looks the same apart from its label.
- Above the results. A banner shown before the list starts. On some apps it carries a brand’s name.
Because a paid result looks like any other, a shopper’s first screen can be a mix of both, and a product that ranks first among the unpaid results can still sit below a paid one.
How much of a results page is paid
It differs by app. Counting every result slot each app marked as paid, at stores across the country, 4% to 36% of the result slots were paid, depending on the app.
These are shares over many searches. Paid slots rotate, so the page you see at noon can hold more or fewer.
A paid slot is not always about the word you typed
It is natural to read a sponsored result as “this brand chose this search”. That is not safe. Apps also place paid slots by category, so a brand whose paid slots run across a category can turn up on a search it never picked, including a search for another brand’s name. From outside, all that can be said is: a brand held a paid slot on searches for a keyword. Why it was there is not on the page.
What can be known from outside
- Which brands held a paid slot on a keyword, and each one’s share of the paid slots seen.
- In which cities a brand held a slot, and in which it held none.
- Where on the page its slots fell, and whether a banner carried its name.
- Where the same brand ranks unpaid on the same keyword.
What cannot be known
- Spend, bids, clicks and return. These sit in each brand’s own ad account. No reading of a page can produce them.
- Whether a slot was worth it. That depends on sales, which only the app and the brand see.
If you want to look yourself
Open the app without signing in, set a delivery address, type the keyword, and note which results carry the paid label. Then do it again in another city and at another hour. One look will mislead you in both directions: a brand you saw once may hold a slot in few cities, and a brand you did not see may hold one in most. Shelf names a brand on a keyword only when it held a paid slot in five or more cities, on Blinkit, Zepto, Swiggy Instamart, BigBasket, Flipkart Minutes and JioMart.