• A new report points to households with kids as "power users" of apps like Uber.
• Families tend to use the apps more often than other groups and spend more on them, TransUnion found.
• Uber and other ride-hailing apps are trying to increase how often users turn to them.

If you have kids, there's a good chance that you rely a lot more on gig delivery and ride-hailing services than most people, according to a new report.

Families with children are more likely to use a range of gig services more often than people without kids, making them "power users," a report from TransUnion this month found.

Sixty-one percent of respondents with kids said they order food for delivery from a service like DoorDash "once or multiple times a week," according to a survey of 1,051 adults that TransUnion conducted in February. About 40% of respondents without children said the same.

Households with children also spent more than those without kids. About 5% of childless users spent more than $500 a month on gig services. For people with kids, 23% spent at least that much.

Families represent exactly the kinds of users that many gig apps want: People who use the apps frequently and spend a lot on them. While apps like Uber focused on getting customers to start using their services last decade, many now want to become part of users' daily routines, providing rides to work and delivering grocery hauls.

"It's not only usage in terms of frequency, but usage in terms of just sheer amount of money that's spent as well," Mark Rose, senior director, market strategy for TransUnion's retail business, told Business Insider in an interview.

Some delivery and ride-hailing apps have added features specifically for families. In 2023, for instance, Uber started offering accounts specifically for teens to order food for delivery or call a ride — with parental oversight of their spending and confirmation that they made it to their destination.

Gig apps could do even more to cater to families, TransUnion's Rose said.

For example, TransUnion's survey found that promotions — think limited-time discounts or coupons — were one of the top factors that users with kids considered when deciding which app to use.

That means gig apps could offer more promotions specifically for families, especially given their growing businesses in advertising and helping restaurants and brands market to specific types of customers, Rose said.

"Could I help a restaurant target certain promotions based on family meal deals or other sorts of options that would appeal to a family?" Rose said. "I think there's more to be done there."

Spokespeople for Uber and DoorDash did not respond to requests for comment from BI.

Do you have a story to share about gig work? Contact this reporter at [email protected] or 808-854-4501.

• Fidji Simo, 39, is set to join OpenAI later this year as its CEO of applications.
• Simo spent over a decade at Meta and is the chair and CEO of Instacart.
• She grew up in a fishing village in France before starting her career in Silicon Valley.

Fidji Simo's career in tech has already taken her from Facebook to Instacart. Now, she's set to join OpenAI as its new CEO of applications.

On Wednesday, OpenAI announced that it had hired Instacart's chair and CEO to join its C-suite. OpenAI's CEO, Sam Altman, wrote in a blog post that Simo is "uniquely qualified" for the role and will report to him directly.

Altman said Simo "has already contributed a great deal to our company" since she joined OpenAI's board in March 2024. She is expected to join OpenAI's leadership team later this year after she begins her "transition from her role at Instacart over the next few months."

The hiring of Simo, 39, who spent much of her career at Meta, has been interpreted by some people in the tech industry that OpenAI is serious about building a social network. The Verge reported last month that OpenAI was in the early stages of building an X-like product.

"It looks like they want to go after Facebook, after every consumer mobile app that is successful because they can and because she has the background to do it," Julien Codorniou, a partner at 20VC who worked alongside Simo at Facebook, told Business Insider. "It's a very big signal to the competition, to the market, and to the users."

Simo did not respond to a request for comment from BI. OpenAI referred BI to Altman's blog post on Simo's hiring.

'The crew comes before you, always'

Simo's story began in Sète, the French fishing port town where she grew up.

"My family, all the men in my family, whether it's my dad, my grandpa, great grandpa, and all my uncles were fishermen and one of them, my uncle became a fish monger, after you know, stopping fishing," Simo told Bloomberg in an interview that aired in November.

Simo started her corporate career at eBay as a strategy manager in 2007, after graduating from HEC Paris, one of France's top business schools.

The French-American joined Meta, then known as Facebook, in 2011.

Simo's rise at Facebook was meteoric. Even her job application was remarkable. She applied for a marketing communications role — an area in which she had no previous experience, but she was determined to give it a shot regardless.

In a 2021 interview on "The Twenty Minute VC" podcast, she recalled how she spent an entire Thanksgiving weekend inventing a new product called "Facebook Stores," and recorded a webinar and produced marketing materials to promote it. The presentation helped her get the Facebook role, but Simo said the hiring manager later laughed that she would never have been considered just on her previous experience alone. (Facebook later launched a very similar initiative, called Shops.)

Simo later switched from marketing to product — another role where she had no prior experience — and worked on some of the most influential product launches at Facebook. She was put in charge of monetizing mobile shortly after its 2012 IPO, at a time when there were concerns about whether the company could ever make a successful mobile business. She led the launches of video products like Facebook Live and Facebook Watch and eventually rose to lead the Facebook app.

"I think a lot of my career took off around moments where I made bets other people didn't think were obvious bets," Simo said on the "Twenty Minute VC" podcast interview.

Simo became popular among coworkers and business partners alike. Dominique Delport, who sat on Facebook's client council for eight years when he was managing director at the French advertising giant Havas Group, told BI that "openness" is a big part of Simo's leadership philosophy.

"Big Tech sometimes has an image of arrogance — and Facebook has been through some phases — and I think she was among the ones who helped change the perception among the advertising community," Delport said.

Simo joined Instacart's board in January 2021 and became its CEO in August 2021.

Simo said in her interview with Bloomberg that her childhood growing up in a fishing village influenced her career choices.

"I think it was incredibly special because there is a craft and a respect that fishermen have. It's interesting, in Silicon Valley, the people who are most respected are like tech people, whereas here, the people who are most respected are the people who feed the town," Simo said.

"So in a way, becoming CEO of Instacart is kind of bridging these two things for me, where I love tech but I always had a passion for feeding people, and so it's a really special thing to be able to bridge the two," Simo added.

In a profile published by Sequoia in February 2024, Simo said her leadership style was shaped by her father and grandfather, who were both boat captains.

"The crew comes before you, always," Simo said of their leadership ethos.

Simo is also a passionate artist. A sculptor and painter, she previously served on the boards of Cirque du Soleil and the L.A. Dance Project.

"You always need to put creativity at the center of everything you do," she said on the "Twenty Minute VC podcast."

Leaving Instacart

Simo's exit comes in the same week Instacart reported its best quarterly order growth in more than two years. It also forecast positive growth for the second quarter, bucking the trend of a bleak retail sector.

Rachel Wolff, an analyst at EMARKETER, a BI sister company, said the upbeat earnings showed "how successfully the company has positioned its service as a necessity for many households."

In a letter to Instacart employees on Wednesday evening, Simo said it was an "incredibly hard decision" for her to leave the company.

Simo said her decision was partly driven by her passion for AI and its "potential to cure diseases," which made OpenAI a difficult opportunity to pass up. Simo is currently the president of the Metrodora Institute, a for-profit healthcare clinic that focuses on treating complex neuroimmune diseases.

While she will remain CEO of Instacart while the company searches for a successor, Simo is preparing her next chapter. Simo has previously said her favorite book is "The Night Circus," a fantasy novel about two magicians preparing to take each other on in a deadly duel. Now working for Sam Altman, Simo is set to go into battle with her former mentor, Mark Zuckerberg, as OpenAI bids to dominate the world of apps.

"For that job, she's absolutely perfect," said Codorniou. "She has something very special — she's one in a billion."

• Sam Altman said he has hired Fidji Simo, Instacart's chair and CEO, as his new CEO of applications.
• Altman said he will remain as CEO, and Simo will start work at the ChatGPT maker later this year.
• Simo has "contributed a great deal" to OpenAI since she joined its board in March 2024, Altman said.

Fidji Simo, the CEO and chair of Instacart, will join OpenAI as its new CEO of applications, Sam Altman said on Thursday.

"I'll remain CEO of OpenAI, but in this new configuration I'll be able to increase my focus on research, compute, and safety," Altman wrote in an X post announcing Simo's hiring on Thursday morning.

Altman announced Simo's hiring in a message to employees on Wednesday. OpenAI published Altman's message as a blog post on the same day.

"Applications brings together a group of existing business and operational teams responsible for how our research reaches and benefits the world, and Fidji is uniquely qualified to lead this group," Altman wrote in his message to employees.

Altman said in his message that Simo "has already contributed a great deal to our company" since joining OpenAI's board in March 2024. He added that Simo will start work at OpenAI later this year and "will transition from her role at Instacart over the next few months."

In her new role, Simo will report directly to Altman.

"Fidji is exceptional; we have worked together on OpenAI for the past year and I have observed her deep commitment to our mission," Altman wrote on X.

"I cannot imagine a better new team member to help us scale the next 10x (or 100x, let's see)," Altman added.

When approached for comment, a spokesperson for OpenAI referred Business Insider to its blog post.

Simo started her career at eBay before moving to Meta, where she oversaw Facebook's app and advertising products.

She joined Instacart as a board member in January 2021 and became its CEO in August 2021.

On Thursday, Simo wrote in an X post that she will continue to be Instacart's CEO for the next few months and will still chair its board after she joins OpenAI.

"I'm so grateful to my Instacart team for the amazing ride we had together, and I look forward to supporting the next CEO during the transition," Simo added.

Simo did not immediately respond to a request for comment from BI.

Simo isn't the first big C-suite hire OpenAI has made in the last year.

In June, OpenAI said it had hired Sarah Friar and Kevin Weil as its new chief financial officer and chief product officer respectively.

Friar was previously the CEO of media platform Nextdoor and the CFO of mobile payment company Square. Weil was formerly the vice president of product at Instagram and the senior vice president of product at Twitter.

• Gig workers for Uber, Instacart, and other services made less money for their time in 2024.
• Even when delivery and ride-hailing drivers made more, their hours rose, too, a new report found.
• Gig workers have said their jobs have gotten more competitive and less lucrative in recent years.

Gig workers for Uber, Instacart, and other services made less money on average in 2024 — even as the number of hours that they worked rose, in some cases.

Uber hide-hailing drivers saw their earnings for 2024 fall 3.4% on average to $513 a week, according to a study released Tuesday by data analytics company Gridwise. At the same time, Uber drivers worked 0.8% more hours in 2024.

Lyft drivers, meanwhile, worked 5.4% fewer hours in 2024, but saw their pay decline at a faster clip of 13.9% to $318 a week.

Workers who shop and deliver orders for Instacart saw their pay for the year decline 8% to $194. Their hours worked fell 4.9%.

"Drivers are earning less across all of the platforms," Ryan Green, the CEO of Gridwise, told Business Insider.

Meantime at DoorDash, gross weekly earnings rose 4.8% to $240 in 2024. Hourly earnings for those on the app fell, though, as the number of hours that gig workers spent on the app rose 5.2%.

Amazon Flex workers were in a similar situation. Their earnings soared 18.1% to $413 a week — just as their hours increased 20.4%.

Uber Eats workers made $178 a week, or 5.1% more than 2023. Average worker hours on the app rose 2.1%, though.

The only app where workers earned significantly more money for the same or less work was Favor, a service owned by Texas supermarket H-E-B that delivers online orders for the chain. There, workers saw their pay rise 3.4% to $155 a week in 2024 as their hours worked fell 13.1%.

In response to the report, an Uber spokesperson told BI that its drivers make more than $30 an hour on average.

A Lyft spokesperson referred BI to comments that CEO David Risher made this month on the company's earnings call, including that ride-hailing drivers on the app earned a collective $9 billion in 2024. That was "the highest amount of combine driver earnings on our platform ever," Risher said.

An Instacart spokesperson called the report's findings "inaccurate and misleading."

"Shopper earnings remain steady across the Instacart platform, and we continue to hear from shoppers that Instacart creates rewarding, flexible earnings opportunities that allow them to earn on their own time and their own terms," the spokesperson said.

DoorDash declined to comment. Amazon and Favor did not respond to requests for comment.

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Gridwise obtained the data for the report using its own app, which it markets to gig workers to track their earnings and expenses. The company analyzed 171 million trips and $1.9 billion worth of gig worker earnings documented by the app to compile its findings for 2024.

The report also found that the average restaurant delivery worker relied on tips for a majority — 53.4% — of their earnings. For grocery delivery workers, 45.7% of earnings came from tips.

Tips were much less significant for ride-hailing drivers, Gridwise found. Gratuities made up just 10.4% of earnings, per the report.

Gig workers have told BI that claiming good-paying rides and orders on the apps has gotten more competitive. Some workers have even set up their own businesses to offer rides or deliver restaurant food in hopes of making more money than they do on the apps.

Consumers, meanwhile, told Gridwise that they plan to keep using ride-hailing and delivery services despite the lingering effects of inflation on many items in Americans' monthly budgets.

Majorities of the 1,000 customers surveyed by Gridwise in January said that they thought prices on both ride-hailing apps like Uber and Lyft as well as grocery delivery apps like Instacart were "reasonable."

"They talk about being price-sensitive, but their actions reflect differently," Green said.

Do you work for Uber, Lyft, DoorDash, Instacart, or another service that uses gig workers and have a story idea to share? Reach out to this reporter at [email protected]

• Instacart on Sunday is set to air its first Super Bowl ad, featuring nostalgic brand mascots.
• In an interview, Instacart CMO Laura Jones shared the risks involved in creating the campaign.
• Instacart is betting its investment will boost the brand along with sales and ad revenue.

Instacart's chief marketing officer, Laura Jones, acknowledges she's been a little stressed recently.

Jones and her team are preparing to air Instacart's first Super Bowl ad, and the stakes are high.

Any brand looking to stand out this weekend during TV advertising's tentpole event has a lot on the line. Some brands paid the broadcaster Fox upward of $8 million to secure 30 seconds of airtime this year. That doesn't even include the costs of producing the ad and the extra media buys on social media and elsewhere.

"There have been so many mornings over the past six months where I've just been scared we're taking this huge risk," Jones told BI. "There are points in the creative process when you are kind of operating on faith, and it's scary."

Instacart's ad, which is set to air during the second quarter of the game, draws on nostalgia, bringing back memorable brand mascots from previous Super Bowls. Characters like the Heinz wiener dogs, the Green Giant, the Old Spice Guy, and the Kool-Aid Man join forces to deliver a family's grocery order.

Jones said the ad sought to convey the idea that Instacart takes care of the groceries so its users can take care of their lives.

When Jones took the early Super Bowl ad idea to Instacart CEO Fidji Simo, she said, she was asked by Simo, "How do we know this is going to work?"

Jones did have a data point to back up the strategy: The company's "Bunny Ears" back-to-school campaign during the Paris Olympics had driven "material" sales growth. Still, the Super Bowl would be a much bigger investment.

The four members of the Instacart marketing team behind the Super Bowl push had a make-or-break meeting about whether to go ahead.

"We were like, OK, we're choosing to do this," Jones said. "We're about to take on a ton of work. We're about to take on a huge risk. If we don't do this well, it could cost me or all of us our careers, but do we want to take this risk?"

"We did because we felt like we put in the hard work, we were ready, and we felt confident in our ability to execute," Jones added.

System1, a company that rates TV ads on their potential to drive long-term growth for brands, rated Instacart's ad at 4.1 stars out of a possible 5.9. That's a good score that placed it ninth out of the Super Bowl LIX ads that System1 has analyzed so far. The top-scoring ad, with a perfect score of 5.9 stars, was "The Little Farmer" from Lay's, which tells a story about a girl growing her own potatoes. System1 asks a panel of consumers to indicate how they feel about the ad they're viewing from a list of emotions ranging from contempt and disgust to happiness and surprise.

Vanessa Chin, System1's senior vice president of marketing, said the Instacart ad intensified its emotional connection with viewers by using familiar characters and music.

"Using 'Take It to da House' as the soundtrack was particularly effective, tying into Instacart's delivery business while enhancing the emotional impact with its upbeat tune, often played by marching bands," Chin said.

Instacart faced added complexity by partnering with brands that were also its advertisers

The concept of Instacart's "We're Here" Super Bowl ad itself had added challenges. Instacart had to carefully manage the intellectual property and brand guidelines of all the partners involved — which also happen to be advertisers on its platform. The company worked with the ad agency TBWA\Chiat\Day LA to produce the ad.

Instacart has also been mindful of those relationships as it extended the campaign beyond the TV spot. In the lead-up to the game, it brought some of the mascots to shows, including "Jimmy Kimmel Live!" and the "Today" show. It partnered with Kraft Heinz to have the Wienermobile, driven by the Cheetos mascot, Chester Cheetah, make deliveries in this year's Super Bowl host city, New Orleans, as well as Kansas City and Philadelphia, the hometowns of this year's teams.

"You get this huge benefit of added reach through social, through news coverage," Jones said.

Jones said Instacart would test whether it achieved demonstrable benefits in areas such as unaided awareness and consideration, and whether the campaign produced a measurable lift in gross transaction volume. Instacart will also look at whether the Super Bowl push helps generate revenue for its own advertising business. It's working with its partners to push promotions in the app, such as letting users add a free bag of Cheetos to their orders during game week.

Like many other Super Bowl LIX advertisers, Instacart decided to keep its campaign lighthearted this year.

Jones said the marketing team had considered making a heartstring-puller but felt it would be difficult to stand out. She recalled The Farmer's Dog's "Forever" commercial from the 2023 Super Bowl, which was widely lauded, while other tearjerkers that year weren't as memorable.

Jones said humor served as a great connector, which she hopes will drive affinity for the brand as millions of people tune in Sunday to watch the Chiefs take on the Eagles.

"Humor is something that really plays better in a group," Jones said. "It's more fun to laugh when you're in a group of people than when you're alone in your bed streaming at 11 o'clock at night."

• Humor, nostalgia, and celebrities are set to feature heavily in this year's Super Bowl commercials.
• Brands are aiming for safe, lighthearted ads amid political tensions and economic challenges.
• Data shows Super Bowl advertisers have leaned heavily on celebrities since 2020.

Super Bowl advertisers are leaning into humor, nostalgia, and generous use of celebrities this year as brands look to provide levity — and avoid controversy — in a politically charged year.

Some advertisers have spent more than $8 million to secure 30 seconds of airtime, a person familiar with the matter told Business Insider. They asked for anonymity to discuss sensitive sales negotiations; their identity is known to BI. Marketers will have spent many millions more on production, securing A-list celebrity endorsements, and buying online ads. More than 123 million viewers tuned in to last year's Super Bowl, according to TV measurement firm Nielsen.

Amid these high stakes, advertising insiders said brands have been more likely to play it safe in recent years, wary of a backlash and as they look to guarantee a return on their investment. The ads and teasers released so far for Super Bowl LIX appear to follow that trend.

"Since COVID, Super Bowl ads have taken a pretty decisive turn from being fairly edgy, fairly risque, to ones that are much, much more conscious of the national mood, of sentiment, politics — they sort of became very PC, really shying away from anything that could offend anybody," said Sean Muller, CEO of the ad measurement company iSpot.tv.

Marketers are highly attuned to the recent rollbacks of diversity, equity, and inclusion programs across both corporate America and the federal government.

Bud Light famously became embroiled in a wave of conservative backlash after it featured transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney in a 2023 social media promotion. Bud Light's Super Bowl spot this year follows a much more familiar beer-marketing playbook. Its "Big Men on Cul-de-sac" ad features comedian Shane Gillis, rapper Post Malone, and twice Super Bowl winner Peyton Manning hosting a raucous backyard party.

"Advertisers are really smart to stay away from politically charged themes at all times, but to the extent that they get into something like that, they really shouldn't be doing it when economic times are tough, or there's something negative in the national mood," said Charles Taylor, Villanova School of Business marketing professor and author of the coming book "Winning the Advertising Game: Lessons from the Super Bowl Ad Champions."

Super Bowl advertisers are playing for laughs this year

Comedy is the resounding theme of this year's crop of Super Bowl commercials. According to Daivid, an AI platform that predicts viewers' likely reactions to ads, 14 of the first 19 ads released online ahead of the game featured "amusement" as their top emotion.

Examples include the "It Hits the Spot" ad for Hellmann's Mayonnaise, which enlisted Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan to humorously recreate the classic deli scene from "When Harry Met Sally." Elsewhere, Adam Brody sounds a Pringles can like a blowing horn to conjure the facial hair off famous mustachioed men, including Chiefs coach Andy Reid, NBA star James Harden, the actor Nick Offerman, and Mr. Potato Head. And Coors Light features a slew of CGI sloths who encapsulate what it's like to have a "case of the Mondays" after staying up late on Super Bowl Sunday.

Brynna Aylward, North America chief creative officer of the ad agency Adam&EveDDB, said the overriding warmth of the ads released so far reflects "the hug that we all need this year."

Advertisers have clamored to feature celebrities

The sheer number of celebrities in the commercial breaks won't go unnoticed.

In 2010, only around one-third of Super Bowl ads featured a celebrity, but according to iSpot.tv, celebrities starred in around 70% of the ads in every Super Bowl since 2020.

"It's a shortcut to get people's attention, to get people really excited, and to really say what your brand stands for in tying it to a personality," DDB's Aylward said.

Keep an eye out for celebrities who appeal to Gen Z — see Nerds with singer-songwriter Shaboozey, for example — as this generation moves further into adulthood and has increased buying power, Aylward added.

Uber Eats' 60-second ad will feature a host of well-known stars: Matthew McConaughey, Charli XCX, Greta Gerwig, Sean Evans, Kevin Bacon, and Martha Stewart — seemingly looking to appeal to viewers of all ages.

"We know most of America tunes in to the Super Bowl, from the hardcore football fans to those who watch exclusively for the ads and everyone in between," said Georgie Jeffreys, Uber's head of marketing for North America. "That's why our Uber Eats campaign for the Big Game this year strives to have a little something for everyone."

Nostalgia in numbers

Other Super Bowl advertisers are betting that nostalgia will ensure their commercial success.

Budweiser's cinematic Clydesdale horses and Doritos, with its user-generated "Crash the Super Bowl" contest, are among the returning advertisers hoping to stir memories of Super Bowls past.

Instacart's first-ever Super Bowl ad features the Jolly Green Giant, Kool-Aid Man, Pillsbury Doughboy, and the Energizer Bunny, among other famous brand characters, joining forces to deliver groceries.

Instacart's chief marketing officer, Laura Jones, said the company didn't want to use a celebrity as a "crutch" and instead wanted to try something different.

"We said, let's actually break the patterns," Jones said. "Let's not do what everyone else is doing. And frankly, it'll either be a huge hit or a huge flop."

Whatever theme marketers opt for, Super Bowl ads have become much more than a 30-second TV ad. There are the teasers, pre-game promotions and competitions, on-the-ground experiences on game day, and then the social media activity that looks to maintain the momentum long after the final whistle.

"Brands are spending so much more money on Super Bowl ads for such a short time; they are trying to maximize this opportunity more than ever," said Minkyung Kim, assistant professor of marketing at Carnegie Mellon University's Tepper School of Business.

Margaret Johnson, the chief creative officer at Goodby Silverstein & Partners, has worked on Super Bowl campaigns for Cheetos, Pepsi, and E-Trade, among others, in her 29-year tenure at the creative agency. For Super Bowl LIX, the agency has produced campaigns for Doritos and Mountain Dew Baja Blast. Johnson said the Super Bowl is set to remain advertising's tentpole event for years to come.

"It's one of the last remaining collective viewing experiences and, with the impact you can have on culture, I would say 100% it's worth it," Johnson said.

Correction: February 4, 2025 — An earlier version of this story misstated the name of a brand character appearing in Instacart's ad; it's the Energizer Bunny, not the Duracell Bunny.

People often use multiple apps for notes, schedule management, and to-dos. But why not combine them all in one app? That’s the ethos behind Hero, an all-in-one productivity app with an AI assistant (of course!). The iOS app was developed by former Meta employees Brad Kowalk and Seung W. Lee. Both met while working on […]

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• Instacart is testing a new kind of gig work at some stores.
• Contractors can now earn money by photographing products on shelves to show what's in stock.
• The brands behind the products use the photos to review what's there and how displays look.

Instacart is offering its independent contractors a new type of work: Checking shelves on behalf of the companies that supply stores.

Instacart has been testing the program, which it calls "brand tasks," at some stores since last fall, according to messages seen by shoppers via email and the Instacart app, shared with Business Insider.

"You'll get paid to take photos of what's in stock or refill displays," a message sent to a shopper about a beta version of the program in November said, which was seen by Business Insider.

Instacart built its business using hundreds of thousands of gig workers to shop and deliver groceries, sporting goods, and other items to consumers. The "brand tasks" experiment is one way it's trying to expand into other areas of grocery and retail technology, along with smart shopping carts and advertising.

One shopper in Pennsylvania, who didn't want to be identified for fear of retaliation from Instacart, told BI that they completed one of the tasks, which involved taking a photo of a display of Dove body care products, which Unilever makes. Unilever did not respond to a request for comment. BI verified the shopper's identity and employment by Instacart.

The gig paid about $12 and took about 10 minutes to complete, according to the shopper. That's more than Instacart pays to shop and deliver some orders, which can easily take an hour, the shopper added.

Instacart confirmed that it is testing the program.

"Shoppers can opt-in to receive access to these tasks and will be able to accept the tasks just as they would a standard batch" of orders, an Instacart spokesperson told BI. The spokesperson declined to confirm where in the US Instacart is testing the new offering or which retailers and brands are involved.

Taking photos of how a shelf looks gives the companies that make food, personal care items, and other items information on what's selling and how their products appear to customers. "Brands often work with third parties on a periodic basis to gain insights into their in-stock inventory," the spokesperson said.

Instacart is "primarily focused on display check," the spokesperson said. "We have evaluated other tasks and could consider adding additional tasks in the future."

Gig work has been expanding far beyond delivering restaurant orders and driving people to the airport. Multiple apps now allow nurses to pick up single shifts at hospitals and other medical facilities, for instance.

Do you work for Instacart and have a story idea to share? Reach out to this reporter at [email protected]

• Gig work apps like Uber and Instacart continued to attract millions of workers in 2024.
• The job can still be lucrative, though many workers pointed to challenges.
• From hackers stealing accounts to tip baiting, here's what being a gig worker was like in 2024.

Being a gig worker for Uber, Lyft, DoorDash, Walmart Spark, and other apps came with opportunities and lots of challenges in 2024.

Millions of workers made grocery deliveries, dropped off takeout at doorsteps, and drove people to the airport through the apps. Workers involved in the gig economy told Business Insider that it's still a tempting way to make money.

At the same time, many told BI that they faced challenges working for the apps.

Here are some of the biggest factors that affected gig workers in 2024:

Gig workers said they made less money on apps like Uber Ears and DoorDash than in previous years

Workers' gross earnings on several gig delivery apps, including DoorDash and Uber Eats, fell in 2023, a study from Gridwise found in February. Uber Eats drivers, for instance, saw their earnings fall 15.4% on average — the largest drop of any service. Spokespeople for DoorDash, Uber Eats, and Instacart told BI that the study used incomplete data.

Many gig workers don't even earn the equivalent of their local minimum wage after accounting for expenses such as gas, researchers at the UC Berkeley Labor Center and the Center for Wage and Employment Dynamics found in May.

In some cases, good tips have also gotten harder to come by. Workers for some services, such as Walmart's Spark, told BI that customers continued to "tip bait" them, or offer a good tip when the workers accept a delivery only to take it back afterward.

Some gig delivery services struggled with hackers

Hackers have targeted roughly one-fifth of accounts on food delivery apps, online fraud tracker Sift found in May. That total includes both customer accounts, which hackers can mine for reward points, and the delivery workers' accounts.

Some delivery workers for Walmart's Spark service told BI that they saw signs that someone else was using their account. One said that Spark told her that she was logged into more than one device and her activity history on the app included orders that she had never delivered.

Some legitimate, policy-abiding workers struggled with having their gig work accounts deactivated, often with little explanation or recourse, meanwhile. One facial recognition ID tool used by Walmart's Spark to prevent the improper use of driver accounts even kicked some actual workers off of the app. Walmart said at the time that the facial recognition feature was working as intended and that users who thought that they were incorrectly deactivated could appeal the decision.

Gig workers started their own businesses

Instead of continuing to earn money through apps like Uber or DoorDash, some gig workers started their own businesses to cut out the middleman.

Uber and Lyft drivers with their own black-car services, for instance, told BI that they have been able to make more money by building relationships with clients directly, including many whom they met through rides via the rideshare apps. It's also allowed them to work on their own schedules — something that the rideshare apps have long promoted as a benefit of working for them.

Tony Illes, a delivery driver in Seattle, used a similar approach to start his own food delivery service. Illes told BI that he promotes his service through posters around downtown Seattle and provides estimated wait times to his customers through voice notes.

Cities implemented new pay laws for gig workers

Cities such as New York City and Seattle implemented new laws about gig work, especially pay, at the start of 2024.

In New York, gig workers delivering restaurant food now earn $19.56 an hour at minimum, a rate that will be adjusted for inflation each year. Seattle implemented a law — part of a package called "Pay Up" — that required Instacart and other delivery services to pay workers the equivalent of $19.97 an hour.

The companies fought back. In New York City, for example, DoorDash added a $1.99 fee that it said offset that city's pay law.

And in Seattle, Instacart shoppers in the city's suburbs said that the app was sending them on longer routes to avoid taking them within city limits — and paying them more.

Gig work has expanded beyond rideshare and delivery

Using apps to find work as an independent contractor isn't unique to rideshare and food delivery.

One report summary released earlier this month by the Roosevelt Institute investigated the expansion of such gig apps to nursing jobs at hospitals, care homes, and other medical facilities.

Like rideshare and delivery workers, many nurses and nursing assistants told the researchers behind the report that they appreciate the flexibility that working for the apps gives them. Many also dealt with problems similar to other gig workers, from being kicked off the platforms without explanation to navigating a workplace without an in-person boss or clear coworkers.

One IT worker who found work as an independent contractor in that field told BI in February that he enjoyed the freedom but had a hard time finding a full-time job again.

Do you work in the gig economy and have a story idea? Reach out to this reporter at [email protected]

• Amazon has faced repeated delays in launching a new AI-powered Alexa.
• Integration with partners like Uber and Ticketmaster has complicated troubleshooting processes.
• Latency and compatibility issues have also caused delays.

Amazon's Alexa seems like the perfect product for the generative AI era.

Getting this powerful technology to actually work well with the digital assistant is a monumental challenge that's been plagued by gnarly technical problems and repeated delays.

Customer-friction concerns, partnership hiccups, compatibility questions, latency problems, and accuracy issues have snarled progress, according to internal Amazon documents and multiple people involved in the project.

The Alexa team is under immense pressure to get something out. A decade ago it launched with Echo speakers and became a household name. But that early success fizzled and the business has so far failed to become profitable, leading to drastic cutbacks and layoffs in recent years.

Some company insiders consider this AI moment to be a seismic opportunity for Alexa, and potentially the last chance to reignite consumer interest in the voice assistant through the power of large language models.

A product of this scale is "unprecedented, and takes time," an Amazon spokesperson told Business Insider. "It's not as simple as overlaying an LLM onto the Alexa service."

"RED" warning

One of the main challenges facing the new Alexa relates to how the digital assistant will interact with other companies and services, and who is responsible for customers if their requests, orders, and payments don't go smoothly.

In late August, Amazon was working on integrating 8 third-party applications, including Uber and Ticketmaster, into the upcoming AI-powered Alexa to handle various user inquiries.

At that time, the goal was to launch the new Alexa around mid-October, according to one of the internal documents obtained by Business Insider. However, it was still unclear which companies would be responsible for customer support issues, like payment and delivery errors, this document stated.

The lack of clarity could cause Amazon to send "frequent" customer contacts to the partner companies. Then, those partners would sometimes redirect the users back to Amazon, the document explained.

"This level of support would cause significant customer friction, when some of the orders/purchases are time-sensitive (meal orders or rideshare trips) and purchase mistakes can be expensive (e.g. buy Taylor Swift tickets)," the document said, assigning it a "RED" warning.

Release dates pushed back

Snafus like this have caused Amazon to push back the release date, almost on a weekly basis, according to some of the people involved in the project, which has been codenamed "Banyan" or "Remarkable Alexa." BI's sources asked not to be identified because they're not authorized to talk to the press.

For example, without more clearly defined responsibilities with third-party partners, Amazon expected further delays in the launch. "Alignment on customer support plans between Product teams and the 3P partners may push this timeline further out if any delays occur," one of the documents warned.

The company had once planned for a June launch, but after repeated delays, it told employees late last month that the new Alexa would launch "no earlier" than November 20, one of the documents said.

A few of people BI spoke with recently are even talking about the Alexa upgrade rolling out in early 2025, which would miss the key holiday period. Bloomberg earlier reported on a 2025 launch plan.

As of late October, Amazon had not settled on an official brand for the updated voice assistant, and instructed employees to simply call it the "new Alexa" until further notice, one of the documents said.

Alexa's huge potential

To be sure, Alexa has significant long-term potential in the generative AI era — as long as Amazon can iron out problems relatively quickly.

Time is of the essence, partly because the existing Alexa business has lost momentum in recent years. According to a recent report from eMarketer, user growth for major voice assistants, including Alexa, has declined significantly in recent years.

The sudden rise of ChatGPT has showcased what is possible when powerful AI models are integrated smoothly with popular products that consumers and companies find useful.

Some Amazon leaders are bullish about the AI-powered Alexa and a new paid subscription service that could come with it. At least one internal estimate projected a 20% conversion rate for the paid subscription, one of the people said. That would mean that out of every 100 existing Alexa users, roughy 20 would pay for the upgraded offering. Amazon doesn't publicly disclose the number of active Alexa users but has said it has sold more than 500 million Alexa-enabled devices.

An internal description of the new Alexa shows Amazon's grand ambitions: "A personalized digital assistant that can handle a wide range of tasks, including drafting and managing personal communications, managing calendars, making reservations, placing orders, shopping, scouting for deals and events, recommending media, managing smart home devices, and answering questions on virtually any topic," one of the documents said.

Customers will be able to access the new Alexa "through natural language using voice, text, email, shared photos, and more across all their devices like Echo, Fire TV, mobile phones, and web browsers," it added.

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy shared a similar vision during last month's earnings call, saying the new Alexa will be good at not just answering questions, but also "taking actions."

In an email to BI, Amazon's spokesperson said the company's vision for Alexa is to build the world's "best personal assistant."

"Generative AI offers a huge opportunity to make Alexa even better for our customers, and we are working hard to enable even more proactive and capable assistance on the over half a billion Alexa-enabled devices already in homes around the world. We are excited about what we're building and look forward to delivering it for our customers," the spokesperson said.

Smaller AI models

Still, the project has grappled with several challenges, beyond customer friction and partnership problems.

Latency has been a particularly tough problem for the AI Alexa service. In some tests, the new Alexa took about 40 seconds to respond to a simple user inquiry, according to three people familiar with the test results. In contrast, a Google Search query takes milliseconds to respond.

To speed up, Amazon considered using a smaller AI model, like Anthropic's Claude Haiku, to power the new Alexa, one of the people said. But that dropped the quality and accuracy of the answers, leaving Amazon in limbo, this person said. In general, smaller language models generate quicker responses than larger models but can be less accurate.

Amazon had initially hoped to use a homegrown AI model, one of the people said. Last year, Alexa head scientist Rohit Prasad left the team to create a new Artificial General Intelligence group at Amazon. The stated goal of the new team was to create Amazon's "most expansive" and "most ambitious" large language models.

However, this AGI team has not produced notable results so far, which led Amazon to consider Anthropic's main Claude offering as the primary AI model for the new Alexa, this person said. Reuters previously reported that Amazon was going to mainly power Alexa with Claude.

Amazon's spokesperson said Alexa uses Amazon Web Services's Bedrock, an AI tool that gives access to multiple language models.

"When it comes to machine learning models, we start with those built by Amazon, but we have used, and will continue to use, a variety of different models — including Titan and future Amazon models, as well as those from partners — to build the best experience for customers," the spokesperson said.

The spokesperson also added a note of caution by highlighting the difficulties of successfully integrating large language models with consumer applications. These models are great for conversational dialogue and content creation, but they can also be "non-deterministic and can hallucinate," the spokesperson added.

Getting these models "to reliably act on requests (rather than simply respond) means it has to be able to call real-world APIs reliably and at scale to meet customer expectations, not just in select instances," the spokesperson explained.

New risks

In late August, Amazon discovered several new risk factors for the AI Alexa service.

Only 308 of more than 100,000 existing Alexa "skills," or voice-controlled applications, were compatible with the new Alexa, presenting a "high risk for customers to be frustrated," one of the documents explained.

Some older Echo devices would not be able to support the AI-powered Alexa, the document also warned. And there were no plans for expanding the new service to dozens of overseas markets where Alexa is currently available, leaving a large user base out of touch, it also noted. Fortune previously reported some of these risk factors.

Integration headaches

As of late August, Amazon had 8 "confirmed" partner companies to handle certain tasks for the new Alexa, as BI previously reported. The company hopes to onboard roughly 200 partners by the third year of the new Alexa's launch, one of the documents said.

Integrating with some of these companies has already created headaches. One document said that Amazon struggled to develop a consistent troubleshooting process across every partner service. Companies including Uber, Ticketmaster, and OpenTable have deprecated their existing Alexa skills, further disconnecting them from the voice assistant.

Amazon's spokesperson said that, as with any product development process, a lot of ideas are discussed and debated, but "they don't necessarily reflect what the experience will be when we roll it out for our customers."

Amazon has also anticipated customer complaints, at least in the early launch phase. One internal document from late August stated that the new Alexa was projected to receive 176,000 customer contacts in the first three months of its release. At one point, Amazon considered launching a new automated troubleshooting service for issues related to its devices and digital services, including Alexa, according to one of the internal documents. That was later shelved.

Do you work at Amazon? Got a tip?

Contact the reporter, Eugene Kim, via the encrypted-messaging apps Signal or Telegram (+1-650-942-3061) or email ([email protected]). Reach out using a nonwork device. Check out Business Insider's source guide for other tips on sharing information securely.

• Costco has been clamping down shoppers using membership cards that don't belong to them.
• There are still ways to shop without a membership: online, with a gift card, or as a member's guest.
• The extra charges and hassle of workarounds can quickly add up to more than the annual fee, though.

Costco's Netflix-style crackdown on unauthorized membership sharing over the past year raises a perennial question about how to access the jumbo packs of toilet paper, tubs of peanut butter pretzels, 40-pound bags of dog food, and other staples without signing up for a membership.

Access to the warehouse club and its bulk-price deals is primarily reserved for card-carrying shoppers with Gold Star, Executive, or Business memberships, which start at $65 per year and include access for two shoppers who live in the same household (or work for the same business).

Still, there are still ways to shop for Costco's selection without paying the fee.

Here are three ways.

1. Shop online without a Costco membership

While some of Costco.com is reserved for members, non-members are able to buy items through the site's Same-Day option, on Instacart, or with its partnership with Uber Eats, where about 2,000 fresh, frozen, grocery, and household items are available for delivery.

The best prices on those platforms are reserved for members only, so the savings compared to other retailers, like Walmart or Amazon, might not be as substantial for non-members. Uber says members will pay 15% to 20% less than non-members, and non-members may be assessed a 5% surcharge on some orders processed through Instacart.

Analysis from Insider's Reviews team in 2022 found the best prices on Costco items are found in-person at a warehouse, while online member pricing was slightly higher, and non-member prices were higher still.

For example, a 30-roll pack of toilet paper was available at the time in-store for $19.99, but on Instacart cost $21.85 for members and $24.87 for non-members.

The Business Insider team created a sample shopping cart of popular items that totaled $131.10 for a non-member shopping via Instacart, but just $96.60 for a member shopping in-store, a savings of $34.50. In that scenario, the $65 membership fee basically pays for itself after just two trips to a warehouse.

2. Use a Costco gift card without a membership

Another popular workaround is to use a Costco gift card, known as a Shop Card, which allows shoppers to access the warehouse to use the funds.

The hitch with this approach is that Shop Cards are only available for members to purchase and have a minimum value of $25.

That $25 would quickly be used up in one visit, and could be a useful hack for helping friends and family stock up on back-to-school supplies, though you might catch some pushback trying to buy $200 more stuff than your gift card is loaded for.

It's an easy way to let someone explore the club on their own, without the commitment of membership, and if they do decide to sign up, the Shop Card funds are redeemable toward the annual fee.

3. Visit the Costco warehouse as the guest of a member

Costco's policy allows members to bring two guests with them to the warehouse, but once again there is a hitch: only the member is allowed to pay for purchases.

As with the Shop Card hack, this approach depends on a fair amount of trust between the member and the non-member, not to mention coordinating schedules to make a trip to the warehouse and sort everything out on Venmo afterward.

Bottom line: It probably makes sense to just pay the fee

Given the costs and complications of trying to avoid shelling out the $65 membership fee, it may make more financial sense to simply pay the charge, especially for shoppers who expect to make more than a couple Costco trips per year.

An Business Insider's Reviews team found, the prices of bulk-size items can add up quickly, and shaving a few percent off in fees means the breakeven point comes after just a few trips.

As the company puts it, "rest assured that the cost of membership can be recovered quickly thanks to massive price savings once you start shopping."

The math starts to get even more interesting when considering whether to upgrade to the $130 Executive level.

Either way, the real kicker is even simpler: if you don't think the membership is worth it, you can get a refund.