The Big Questions Leaders Are Asking
1. What is the biggest challenge CPG leaders face in digital commerce?
Quick Answer
The sheer scale and speed of today’s digital shelves has outpaced human-led operating models, creating what executives call a “mathematical impossibility.”
In-Depth Insight
Consumer goods companies must now manage millions of digital shelf placements across e-commerce, curbside pickup, delivery, and retailer apps. Each SKU may require 100+ unique shelf variations per retailer, while retail media costs continue to climb without driving incremental demand. Even the best teams, armed with AI tools, find themselves stretched impossibly thin.
This dynamic erodes margins and creates structural disadvantages. One CFO described it bluntly: the cost of selling has risen faster than sales, while retailers like Walmart and Amazon increasingly monetize shelf access.
Executive Quote
“The Walmart’s of the world have learned from Amazon, and now they are squeezing the brands even more. They’re creating new revenue streams that go straight to the bottom line, and CPG companies are seeing their margins eroded.” – CFO, Beauty
2. Why are traditional operating models breaking down?
Quick Answer
Legacy silos and disconnected tools make it impossible to keep pace with machine-speed commerce.
In-Depth Insight
Most CPG organizations were built for a handful of channels. Today’s environment demands real-time execution across thousands of touchpoints, yet most teams remain siloed:
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​Digital commerce, marketing, and supply chain operate with misaligned incentives.
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Retail media, content, and analytics teams work toward narrow KPIs, creating friction.
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90% of product pages remain untouched for months or years, despite being the gateway to all digital sales.
These structural inefficiencies mean companies update only their top 5–10% of SKUs with any regularity, leaving the long tail unoptimized — and competitors to capitalize
Executive Quote
"The financial incentives are misaligned. You’ve got a digital team trying to sell in digital channels. You’ve got a regular bricks and mortar team trying to sell bricks and mortar and they’re competing with each other.” – CCO, Home, Health & Personal Care
3. How are private labels and insurgent brands gaining ground?
Quick Answer
Focused competitors are growing faster by exploiting simplicity and speed.
In-Depth Insight
Private labels and insurgent brands thrive because they are simpler, leaner, and faster than traditional CPGs.
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Private labels grew 3.9% vs. 1% for national brands in 2024 and are projected to hit 24% share by 2030.
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Digitally native insurgents delivered 45% of personal care category gains last year despite minimal market share.
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Third-party marketplace sellers now account for 62% of all Amazon unit sales, enabling laser-focused shelf competition.
These brands succeed because they can concentrate resources on fewer SKUs or single retailers — an agility national brands struggle to match.
Executive Quote
“These smaller brands are niche and focused. CPGs are trying to cater to everyone and end up not being great for anyone. It’s like the Roman Empire versus the barbarians.” – CFO, Beverages
4. Why don’t more tools, even AI-powered, solve the problem?
Quick Answer
Tools add dashboards, but not orchestration. The problem is systemic fragmentation, not lack of technology.
In-Depth Insight
Executives report that tools often increase complexity instead of reducing it:
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Nearly 70% of leaders spend more time reconciling data across systems than acting on it.
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Tools address narrow use cases but fail to unify decisions across shelves, media, and supply.
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Fragmentation across teams and vendors locks companies into a reactive, firefighting mode.
As one apparel CFO emphasized, the solution isn’t more point tools — it’s a foundational architecture that integrates intelligence, execution, and governance across the entire commerce ecosystem.
Executive Quote
“Tools today don’t solve the systemic challenge. You need a foundational architecture—not just edge-case fixes—to support sustainable transformation.” – CFO, Apparel
5. What role will automation and AI play in the future of commerce?
Quick Answer
Automation is essential for capacity, but only integrated systems unlock profitable growth.
In-Depth Insight
Executives see automation as a way to reduce manual firefighting and free up human talent for innovation. McKinsey estimates that 35% of consumer enterprise activities could be automated by 2030.​
AI alone, however, doesn’t fix fragmentation. Without integration, companies simply automate silos. Leaders emphasize that agentic systems — not just AI tools — are required to orchestrate across every shelf, SKU, and retailer.
Executive Quote“AI is going to help solve the capacity problem. You can reduce human capital and reallocate those resources to other areas that can grow your business.” – CCO, Multi-national Conglomerate
6. What is an agentic system and why is it different from automation?
Quick Answer
An agentic system continuously senses, decides, and acts across connected functions — operating at machine speed.
In-Depth Insight
Unlike rules-based automation, which executes pre-set scripts, an agentic system is autonomous and goal-directed. It:
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Captures signals across consumers, retailers, and competitors in real time.
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Decides on optimal responses to optimize outcomes.
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Executes actions continuously while learning and improving.
In commerce, this means orchestrating product listings, media, assortment, and search positioning across every retailer — all aligned to financial outcomes.
Executives in our study agreed:
Incremental tools cannot compete with insurgents moving at machine speed. Only agentic systems reset the playing field.
7. What measurable impact can agentic systems deliver?
Quick Answer
Research shows +9% operating income improvements, plus durable cost and agility advantages.
In-Depth Insight
Independent modeling and C-suite interviews confirm that integrated agentic systems can deliver:
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+9% operating income improvements, through both sales gains and cost curve flattening.
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Faster Execution — responding to market shifts in hours vs. months.
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Lower Costs at Scale — flattening operational cost curves while expanding reach.
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Compounding Advantages — higher sales, lower costs, and freed strategic resources.
Executives emphasize that this isn’t about “savings” alone. It’s about resetting growth in an industry stuck in flat or declining trajectories.
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8. What is IPG’s Agentic System for Commerce (ASC)?
Quick Answer
ASC is the first integrated system designed to unify intelligence, agents, and execution for commerce at machine speed.
In-Depth Insight
Built on IPG’s acquisition of Intelligence Node, ASC provides:
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Market-wide intelligence at SKU and store level across major retailers.
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Commerce agent pods that continuously monitor competitors, trends, and consumer behavior.
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Execution-first orchestration, aligning product pages, retail media, and assortment decisions to shared financial outcomes.
As one executive said, the real-time activation ASC enables is unmatched in the industry.
Executive Quote
"The real-time activation is the most compelling part… that level of integration I haven’t seen before.” – CFO, Beverages
9. Why is now the inflection point for CPG leaders?
Quick Answer
Because every delay has a cost — and competitors are already moving at machine speed.
In-Depth Insight
In digital commerce:
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Search rankings shift daily; brands that don’t optimize lose visibility.
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Shopper behavior is shaped in real time by reviews, social trends, and search.
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Insurgents adjust in hours, not months, outmaneuvering legacy players.
Executives describe this as a now-or-never moment: those who don’t move to agentic systems will continue ceding ground, while early adopters will compound advantages in cost, speed, and share.
10. How can companies start exploring ASC?
Quick Answer
By engaging IPG for a tailored proof of concept and impact analysis.
In-Depth Insight
IPG offers select CPG companies the following:
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A proof-of-concept optimization brief using their Intelligence Node data enabling you to test the power of the system without having to provide any data beforehand.
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Tailored impact analysis showing the estimated financial impact of using the system for your product portfolio.
Related Questions Leaders Are Asking
In our research with 40 CPG executives, many leaders raised questions about the language and mechanics of today’s digital commerce environment. Terms like digital shelf, retail media, and zero-click results are shaping the way brands compete, yet they’re often misunderstood or oversimplified. This section addresses those questions directly, providing clear, authoritative definitions and implications so leaders can make smarter, faster decisions.
1. What is a digital shelf in e-commerce?
The digital shelf is how a product appears when a shopper searches on a retailer’s site or app. It includes product images, descriptions, pricing, availability, reviews, and rankings. Optimizing the digital shelf is critical because it determines both visibility and conversion for every online sale.
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2. Why are product detail pages (PDPs) so important?
A product detail page (PDP) is the dedicated online page for each product. It is the single gateway to digital sales, influencing both search visibility and conversion rates. Neglecting PDP optimization can mean losing share to competitors with stronger content.
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3. What is retail media, and why does it matter?
Retail media is advertising that appears on a retailer’s digital or physical properties, such as sponsored search, banners, or app promotions. It has become one of the fastest-growing cost centers for brands. While necessary for visibility, rising retail media costs often cut into margins.
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4. What is a retailer algorithm?
A retailer algorithm is the proprietary formula retailers use to rank products on their digital shelves. It determines search placement based on factors like relevance, availability, price, and past performance. Mastering these algorithms is essential to maintaining visibility in competitive categories.
5. What does inventory rebalancing mean?
Inventory rebalancing is the practice of shifting stock across locations or channels to prevent out-of-stocks and reduce excess inventory. Increasingly, it’s tied to retail media activations to prioritize high-demand markets. Done right, it improves both availability and profitability.
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6. What are zero-click results in search?
Zero-click results occur when a search engine answers a shopper’s question directly on the results page, without requiring a click. With generative AI search, this is becoming common — up to 80% of consumers now rely on zero-click outcomes in at least 40% of their searches.
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7. What is closed-loop attribution?​
Closed-loop attribution connects marketing activity directly to sales outcomes. It shows which media actions drove actual purchases, enabling brands to reallocate budgets with precision. In commerce, this is critical to proving ROI on rising retail media investments.
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8. Who are third-party marketplace sellers?
Third-party marketplace sellers are independent businesses that list products directly on platforms like Amazon or Walmart.com. They now account for 62% of units sold on Amazon, creating intense competition for national CPGs. These sellers are often faster and more agile at capturing high-value shelves.