Uber lags behind DoorDash in the U.S. Uber advertisers made up 18% of its merchants

Uber Eats in the U.S accounts for 23% of its total Gross Bookings. Still far behind DoorDash

To prove that it’s a valuable partner for merchants, Uber commissioned what they call Uber Merchant Impact Report. This report is based on internal data between October 2020 and September 2021, as well as an online survey of 727 U.S merchants whose response is anonymous. According to Uber, there are 400,000 active Eats merchants in the U.S alone. Hence, the number of surveyed responders (727) doesn’t seem very representative to me. Nonetheless, the report does have some useful nuggets.

In the last twelve months, Uber Eats facilitated $11 billion in “sales” for merchants in the U.S. The word “sales” here is tricky as I don’t know for sure whether it is Gross Bookings or what merchants actually receive after Uber gets its cut. The difference can be in the region of 25%. In this case, if we assume that the figure is Gross Bookings, it means that Uber Eats in the U.S was responsible for 23% of the company’s total Delivery Gross Bookings (approximately $48 billion) in the last year. Quite a significant piece of the business. However, it still lags quite far behind almost $40 billion in Gross Bookings that DoorDash recorded in the U.S in the same time frame.

Additionally, Delivery has 400,000 active merchants and 2 million active drivers in the U.S at the end of September 2021. In the past year, these merchants and drivers helped facilitate more than 500 million Eats orders. In contrast, DoorDash, if we assume all their Operating metrics are U.S alone, has 500,00 active merchants, 3 million active riders and almost 1.3 billion orders.

	Uber Eats/Delivery	DoorDash
Gross Bookings between Oct 2020 and Sep 2021 (in $ billion)	11 – 13.75	40
Orders between Oct 2020 and Sep 2021 (in millions)	500	1,300
Active merchants as of end of Sep 2021 (in thousands)	400	500
Active drivers as of end of Sep 2021 (in thousands)	2,000	3,000

Uber advertising is growing

Uber advertising was first launched in the U.S in Q3 2020, has since expanded to all Eats markets, exceptGermany, and has been seemingly well-received by merchants. The number of active advertising merchants grew from 30,000 in Q3 2020 to 140,000 a year later. As share of total active merchants, advertisers made up 5% and 18% in Q3 2020 and Q3 2021 respectively.

While the growth figures look good, I have a couple of concerns over this advertising business. The first is its outlook. We obviously can’t expect 100% of merchants to become advertisers. If 18% is the adoption rate right now, how much higher can it go? 25% or 50%? In that case, what would be the ramifications of having too many advertisers and too many sponsored listings on an app? We all feel annoyed with Google searched result pages littered with ads. If Uber is not careful, it will risk losing valuable consumers because of inferior customer experience. That’d be too high a price to pay, I’d say.

The second concern I have is whether this segment can actually move the needle. Uber revealed that advertising reached an annualized run-rate of $100 million in Q3 2021. Whether this number was annualized on a weekly or daily basis is unclear; which makes it impossible to really gauge how much revenue Uber actually generated from advertising. Additionally, even the annualized run-rate of $100 million is a drop in a bucket as Uber’s last 12 months’ revenue was almost $15 billion. Is advertising dollars helpful? Yes. Will it be a needle mover soon? I doubt it.