Quick commerce ads are the paid placements brands buy inside 10-minute delivery apps in India, chiefly Blinkit, Zepto and Swiggy Instamart. Sponsored listings in search and category results are billed per click; banners, shelves and takeovers are billed per thousand impressions. Unlike marketplace ads, they serve only where the local dark store holds stock.
On Amazon or Flipkart an ad can serve anywhere in India and the order ships from wherever stock sits. On Blinkit, Zepto and Instamart the shopper expects delivery in minutes, so the ad only appears in cities and dark stores that physically hold the product. Stock cover, not bid, is the first lever, and an ad that stops serving with wallet balance is almost always a supply problem.
The session is short. A shopper opens the app, searches, adds to cart and pays within a few minutes, so sponsored listings in search do the conversion work while banners do brand recall. That is why search is sold per click and banners per thousand impressions, and why both models appear on one invoice.
Reporting is also different. Quick commerce dashboards show add-to-carts (ATCs) between clicks and orders, and some compute ROAS on MRP rather than selling price. Blooprint's quick commerce ads guide on blooprint.in covers onboarding and formats per app; this page covers the economics.
Worked example: a brand puts ₹30,000 a month into sponsored listings across two apps. At an average ₹6 CPC that buys 5,000 clicks; at 8% conversion that is 400 orders at ₹75 each. With a ₹250 basket, attributed sales are ₹1,00,000 and ROAS is 3.3 on the dashboard. After a 20% commission and the difference between MRP and selling price, the true return is closer to 2.
Agencies report search CPCs of ₹4 to ₹25, display CPCs of ₹1 to ₹8 and banner CPMs of ₹80 to ₹250 across the three apps, with Zepto typically the cheapest per click. Festive-season packages bundling banners and search are reported by Inc42 at ₹2 to ₹9 lakh for three months, and the same report cites a 120% order surge in the festive weeks. None of these are platform rate cards.
All three platforms charge 18% GST on ad invoices, claimable as input credit.
CPC, CPM and package prices across Blinkit, Zepto and Instamart, with sources.
Learn more →Formats, Brand Central and Product Booster.
Learn more →Jarvis, access and CPC ranges.
Learn more →Item Boost and banner formats.
Learn more →Spend, sales and ROAS from every marketplace in one dashboard, with Excel export.
Learn more →It means the paid placements brands buy inside 10-minute delivery apps such as Blinkit, Zepto and Swiggy Instamart: sponsored listings billed per click and banners billed per thousand impressions, served only where the dark store has stock.
Agencies report search CPCs of ₹4 to ₹25 and banner CPMs of ₹80 to ₹250. Festive packages are reported at ₹2 to ₹9 lakh for three months. The platforms publish no rate cards, so confirm current pricing with each brand team.
Compute break-even first: 1 divided by contribution margin. At a 20% margin the break-even ROAS is 5. Dashboard ROAS is often computed on MRP, so recompute on the price actually paid before judging.
The one where your stock cover and organic sales are strongest. Blinkit has the deepest self-serve reporting, Zepto tends to have cheaper clicks, and Instamart is strongest in South India.
Join 500+ brands powered by our team with