The Digital Commerce Reality CPG Leaders Face Today
Digital commerce has reached a breaking point. Millions of dynamic shelves, rising retail media costs, and shifting algorithms have created what CFOs describe as a “digital commerce cost spiral.” The result: more cost to serve the same shoppers, while private labels, insurgents, and third-party sellers outmaneuver traditional models with greater speed and agility.
The math is unforgiving: 84% of brands on Amazon fail to capture at least one of their top unbranded keywords. Generative AI search is accelerating disruption, with 80% of consumers now relying on zero-click results in at least 40% of their searches—eroding visibility and organic traffic. Private labels are outpacing national brands in growth (3.9% vs 1%) and projected to gain 7% share over the next six years. For traditional CPGs, legacy operating models are structurally disadvantaged in this environment.
The Strategic Shift Required:
From Tools to Agentic Systems
The solution isn't more tools, bigger teams, or even AI-enabled point solutions. Success demands a fundamental reengineering of front-office operations— moving from fragmented, resource-intensive processes toward integrated systems that connect every commerce function to shared financial outcomes.
This means automated, real-time optimization of product listings, media strategies, assortment decisions, and search positioning across millions of digital retail shelves simultaneously—driving coordinated action and aligned performance across your entire commerce ecosystem. Think of it as a front-office version of an ERP system specifically built for commerce but designed in a modern way for easy integration and immediate ROI impact.
How IPG's Agentic Systems for Commerce Delivers Results
IPG’s Agentic System for Commerce (ASC) was designed for this inflection point. Powered by Intelligence Node’s unparalleled data foundation and orchestrated through specialized Commerce Agentic Pods (CAPs), ASC continuously senses, decides, and acts across your entire digital commerce ecosystem.
This isn’t about dashboards or reporting. It’s about orchestration and execution—delivering faster, more precise actions that improve sales while flattening the digital commerce cost curve. Independent impact modeling shows that ASC can generate as much as +9% incremental operating income while enabling companies to respond to shifts in hours rather than months.
What Makes IPG's Solution Unique
Unparalleled Data Foundation
Our acquisition of Intelligence Node provides ASC with the most granular, real-time signal layer in the industry—capturing market-wide data down to the SKU and store level. This dynamic view of your products, competitors, and consumers equips ASC to continuously optimize performance ahead of the market.
Advanced Agentic Architecture
Unlike tools that automate edge cases, our Commerce Agentic Pods (CAPs) were built from the ground up with specialized AI agents that operate 24/7 optimizing performance and adjusting strategies uniquely for each retailer’s platform based on real-time market conditions. This unique design enables ASC to address the scale, speed, and complexity required to compete across today's omni-channel commerce landscape while ensuring brand compliance and regulatory requirements.
Comprehensive Playbook Library
Developed by IPG’s Global Head of AI Commerce—an AI pioneer with over a decade of experience beating major brands in digital channels—our playbook library enables ASC to address both operational and strategic needs. From optimizing product pages and rebalancing excess inventory to capturing incremental share by identifying competitor out-of-stock trends and uncovering hidden consumer preferences for product innovation, ASC executes against the levers that move financial outcomes.
Integrated Systems Approach
The combined architecture eliminates tool sprawl and functional silos by unifying commerce operations into one system. Every action is tied to enterprise-level financial outcomes, ensuring that commerce, marketing, and supply chain teams are not working at cross-purposes but aligned on growth and profitability.
ASC Architecture
Cognitive Layer
Enterprise Super Agent
Retailer Super Agent
Continuously orchestrates the intelligence, activations, and governance for enterprise performance and agility across your retailer ecosystem.
Our Super Agents Framework supports quick and seamless integration with other systems, such as supply chain, to ensure end-to-end alignment across the organization for enterprise-wide performance objectives.
While also providing senior leadership real-time access to market intelligence and activation levers to respond to business challenges as they arise with greater enterprise agility.
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Agentic Layer
Intelligence Briefs
Playbook Library
Specialized Agent Teams
Monitors and optimizes the performance of your product portfolio uniquely for each retailer’s platform.
Our Commerce Agentic Pods (CAPs) architecture was built from the ground up with specialized agents that operate 24/7, leveraging the library of playbooks.
Expert agent teams & playbooks are grouped together in Retailer pods to ensure performance is optimally tuned for the platform and their consumer and competitor nuances.
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Signal Layer
Market Wide Data Signals
Captures market-wide data signals on consumers, your products, and competitors down to the store level in real-time.
Our Intelligence Node Capabilities enables us to captures market-wide data signals in real-time down to the store and SKU level.
Data signals across your products and competitors include
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Product Content, Imagery, and Attributes
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Inventory Levels, Assortment,
Pricing, and Search Ranks -
Ratings & Reviews
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Retail Media Activities
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Consumer Search Trends
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Agentic Systems represents a new business line for IPG and is our strategic response to the fundamental challenges facing brands today. To win in today’s highly competitive and fragmented marketplaces requires enterprise‑scale performance and agility. Agentic Systems for Commerce (ASC) is the inaugural solution in this new business line, purpose‑built to solve the core financial performance challenges facing modern consumer goods companies competing in commerce. It delivers measurable growth, flattens the cost curve, and equips enterprises to compete at machine speed.