Shopper interest and retailer discounts often diverge. CPG brands can use both signals to make more deliberate media choices and measure sales impact.
For CPG media teams, the retailer shoppers prefer and the retailer offering the strongest deal can be two different places. That split can shape where advertising runs, which offers shoppers see and whether a campaign adds sales or simply shifts them between stores.
One SKU, a wide range of offers
In the week of Sept. 14, a 13-ounce pack of a national cookie brand was promoted at five retailers in Dallas. Tom Thumb and Albertsons advertised it for $1.99; Kroger offered two for $6, Dollar General two for $7, and Walgreens two for $10. For the same UPC in the same market, the promoted prices spanned 151% from lowest to highest.
That snapshot doesn’t establish which retailer had the “right” price. Offers ran in each retailer’s Dallas zone, and a higher price may suit that store’s shoppers and margins. But the variation makes a planning problem visible: no shopper necessarily sees the full set of offers, and a brand’s media may not reflect what is available nearby.
The pattern extends beyond one product. During that September week, 1,495 branded CPG SKUs were promoted at three or more U.S. retailers. Nine in 10 had multiple prices, and 40% had a price gap of at least 50%.
Intent and price measure different things
MikMak’s purchase-intent data tracks where shoppers show they want to buy through actual shopping behavior. In Q2 2026, Walmart accounted for 25.9% of U.S. food and beverage purchase-intent clicks, followed by Instacart at 12.2% and Target at 9.3%.
Those figures capture retailer preference, while promotion data captures the offers available at a given time. The signals can point in opposite directions: shoppers may favor one retailer even as another offers the same product for less. Plans built around preference alone can miss a timely deal; plans built around the lowest price can overlook where shoppers already intend to buy.
ShopLiftr and MikMak’s guide, Aligning Discovery with Deals, frames the choice as a set of retailer and product scenarios. When preference is strong but the offer is weaker, brands can retain their preferred retailer, add another retailer to the plan or test the lower offer in a controlled market. The test should establish whether the campaign brought in incremental sales or moved existing sales between retailers.
Make the plan flexible enough for weekly changes
Retailer priorities may be set months ahead, while promotions change each week. ShopLiftr describes the resulting disconnect as an off-site performance gap: media spending grows, but creative can remain separated from current offers and the shoppers ready to act.
Its system draws on a database of trade promotions across more than 300 U.S. retailers, with over 200,000 active deals refreshed weekly. Brands select which retailers to feature. Ads can then show the live offer at those retailers based first on shopper proximity and then on preference. MikMak’s shoppable media connects the ad to the purchase path and helps confirm product availability.
The distinction matters: the data can inform retailer choices, but the brand still makes the strategic call. A nearby offer can give shoppers a reason to act now, while retailer preference provides another signal for deciding where the message belongs.
Measure whether the campaign added sales
A ShopLiftr campaign for a quick-service restaurant licensed CPG brand reported a 7.1% overall sales lift and a 12.3% lift for its hero SKU. The campaign generated $491,000 in incremental sales on $96,150 in media spending, according to the company. It was evaluated using matched test and control markets, a 52-week baseline, Nielsen Sales Data and Pathformance xAOC.
Those results offer a measurement model, not a guarantee for other campaigns. The practical questions for a media plan are where shopper interest is concentrated, which offers are live and what each offer is meant to accomplish—defending share, building velocity or encouraging trial. The final check is where intent and deal strength diverge.
For brands, the useful shift is from ranking retailers once to weighing shopper behavior and local offers together, then testing whether the resulting media plan changes sales.
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