How CPG companies can prove brand value
Published: 9/22/2025
Within the consumer packaged goods (CPG) industry, shelf space is currency. Thousands of new CPG products are launched every year, yet the average large-format grocery or supermarket store only has enough shelf space for about 40,000-100,000 unique SKUs. Retailers have finite real estate and countless brands competing to earn it. For CPG companies, success depends not only on selling to consumers but on proving non-negotiable value to retail partners.
That proof needs to extend beyond units moved or trade spend redeemed. It must answer a fundamental question business buyers ask every day: What is the brand's worth to the retailer?
CPG marketing leaders operate in a high-volume, low-margin environment, where every brand decision must pass a profitability test. This scrutiny applies not just to consumer-facing campaigns but to the B2B relationships that stand between a brand and a shopping cart.
Unfortunately, CPG marketers often operate on limited insight. Shopper marketing teams control the data, traditional brand metrics don’t translate to buyer conversations and deterministic methods like media mix modeling (MMM) don’t provide CMOs with a comprehensive view. This is where AI-powered marketing analytics platforms can make a significant difference.
Why traditional B2B marketing measurement models fall short
For decades, marketing for CPG companies has relied on MMM to justify spend. Yet, MMM was designed for scale, not nuance. It provides a high-level, historical view that struggles to attribute value across long, complex buyer journeys. It is especially weak at capturing the value of modern marketing tactics, including brand equity lift from a viral social campaign, the impact of a major sports sponsorship or the ROI of offline activations — all of which provide essential knowledge for CPG CMOs.
This leaves marketing leaders with a significant measurement blind spot. Findings from Nielsen's 2025 Annual Marketing Report underscore this challenge, revealing that marketers are struggling to prove holistic ROI as the consumer journey becomes increasingly fragmented across digital touchpoints and retail media networks.