Brands paid ₹1,636 crore for Zepto ads in the year to March 2026, according to Zepto’s draft IPO prospectus. On Zepto, you run your own campaigns from a self-serve ads platform inside the brand portal. For Instamart ads, Swiggy gives brands a separate ads portal for search ads.
Both apps charge for search ads by the click. Neither publishes a minimum budget or a rate card, so set your own limits before you start.
Blinkit sells its ads through Brand Central, and our guide to Blinkit ads covers it.
Zepto ads for brands on Zepto
Zepto’s brand portal terms say you can create, compare and manage campaigns in the ads platform. Zepto decides who gets access. It can also review your ads and reject any that break its policies.
Zepto’s prospectus, dated 8 June 2026, says 2,468 brands used its ads that year. It describes the main formats. You can buy sponsored search slots and banners inside the app.
You bid for clicks, and the platform suggests keywords and can manage campaigns for you. The terms list more ad types. They include priority listing, video and image ads, scratch cards, games and map pins.
The platform reports your ad spend, your sales by area and your payments. It also has an optional AI assistant, JARVIS AI, which can suggest keywords and change bids or budgets. Zepto’s terms make you responsible for checking what it does.
For more data, Zepto sells Zepto Atom for a monthly fee. It shows live sales, your market share, your stock across Zepto’s stores and the top keywords shoppers search. Zepto offers JARVIS AI and Zepto Atom only to brand owners, not to distributors.
Discounts are separate from ads. On Zepto, a Brand Funded Discount is a discount you pay for, and Zepto bills you for it with a debit note.
Start with search ads on the products that already sell. Add banners once you know which keywords lead to orders. If you’re not on Zepto yet, our guide to selling on Zepto explains how brands get on.
Zepto ads for brands not selling on Zepto
You don’t need to sell on Zepto to advertise on it. The Zepto Ads page offers three formats to any brand, with no product listing needed.
Spotlight shows your brand on the map in Zepto’s order-tracking screen. You choose the neighbourhoods, streets or delivery zones it targets.
Sponsored Display puts your banner on the same order-tracking page. Gamified ads give out your coupons through spin-the-wheel, scratch-card and jackpot games.
You pay by the click (CPC) or by the number of times Zepto shows your ad (CPM). To start, you sign up with your phone number and email, verify your company and upload your creatives.
Read Zepto’s Spotlight terms before you book. Slots go to bidding. The highest bid has the best chance of a slot, but Zepto doesn’t promise one.
Once Zepto confirms a booking, cancelling or pausing it costs you the full amount. If your product needs a licence, such as FSSAI or AYUSH, you must hold it for every area you target. Book a small Spotlight campaign first, because you can’t take the money back.
Zepto Ads Catalyst: Zepto shoppers on Meta
Ads Catalyst is a free Zepto tool for brands listed on Zepto. It builds audiences from Zepto shopper data and sends them to your Meta ad account. Zepto marks Google as coming “soon”.
Every Catalyst ad leads back to your product on Zepto. So you can see who bought, not only who clicked.
If you already run Meta ads, connect your ad account and test one Zepto audience against your usual targeting.
How Zepto bills for ads
Zepto’s terms allow two ways to pay. You pay in advance from a wallet you recharge, or by invoice after the campaign ends. Every fee shows in the “Billing & Payments” section of the ads platform.
Zepto adds GST to its invoices. Unless your contract says otherwise, you have 21 days to pay.
If you pay late, Zepto can stop your campaigns and close your access to the brand portal. It can also take the money from payments it owes you for your stock. Zepto doesn’t promise any number of views, clicks or sales from a campaign.
Zepto won’t take ads for alcohol or tobacco, including surrogate products. It also refuses real-money games, crypto and NFTs, and infant baby products. Sexual wellness products and banned medicines are on the list too, and Zepto blocks these brands at sign-up.
Before your first campaign, check whether your account pays by wallet or by invoice. If it’s by invoice, put each due date in your calendar.
Instamart ads: what Swiggy publishes
Swiggy publishes far less about Instamart ads than Zepto does. Its help page for brands says Instamart has a dedicated advertising portal for targeted search ads. Swiggy doesn’t publish the portal’s web address, a sign-up page or a minimum budget.
Swiggy’s investor presentation of August 2026 shows how the search ads work today. They match your keywords in two ways: exact match and broad match. Swiggy says exact match now handles typos and words in other languages, such as “doodh” for milk.
Broad match links related words, such as shampoo and hair wash. Swiggy also sells ads in the search suggestions that appear as shoppers type. It says these raised searches for brand names by 10%.
Swiggy’s annual report for 2025 to 2026 says it charges for sponsored listings by the click. It also sells some online ads for a fixed period under a contract. Instamart gives brands day-by-day sales data, so you can match your ad spend to your sales.
Swiggy calls its next step “self-managed advertising”. You’ll set one goal, and Swiggy’s system will spread your budget across ad types and placements to reach it. Swiggy hasn’t said when this will launch.
Instamart is also starting to own the stock it sells, which may change how brands work with it. Our guide to selling on Swiggy Instamart explains that change.
Until Swiggy publishes more, ask your Instamart contact for access to the ads portal. Get the formats, the minimum spend and the billing terms in writing.
Before you spend: stock, tiles and a budget per city
These apps sell from dark stores, city by city. Shoppers can only order your product where a nearby dark store has it. So check your stock in each city before you start a campaign there.
On Zepto, the paid Zepto Atom plan shows your stock across Zepto’s stores. Pause your ads in any city where you can’t refill in time.
Next, fix your product tile. A sponsored search slot moves your product higher in the results. Shoppers still choose from your main image, product name and pack size.
So make sure your main image shows the pack clearly at a small size. Put the pack size in the product name.
Then set a budget for each city. Start with the cities where your stock is deepest and your product already sells.
Before you bid, work out what one sale is worth to you. Say each sale leaves you ₹60 after all costs. If one click in ten turns into a sale, don’t pay more than ₹6 a click.
Last, keep the claims in your ads the same as on your pack. Zepto’s terms say your ads must describe your product as it is. For Spotlight, you must also send proof of any claim when Zepto asks.
Quick answers
Where is the Zepto ads portal and login?
Zepto calls it the ads platform. If you sell on Zepto, it’s inside the brand portal at brands.zepto.co.in. If you don’t, sign up from the Zepto Ads page with your phone number and email.
Where is the Instamart ads portal login?
Swiggy doesn’t publish one. Brands already on Instamart log in to the Instamart Brand Portal at partner.instamart.in with a company email. For the ads portal, ask your Instamart contact.
Where we come in
We plan and run ads for brands on Zepto, Instamart and Blinkit, so we know where first-time advertisers waste money. Often it’s ads running in cities with no stock, or one budget spread across every city.
We can set your budget city by city, fix your product tiles and check your campaigns every week. Everything runs in your own Zepto and Instamart accounts, and you keep the login. See our marketplace ads service.
