Elevating and connecting insights from media to shelf
Editor's note: This article is an automated speech-to-text transcription, edited lightly for clarity.
Can your company trace the entire shopper journey, from first exposure to point of purchase? While some can, many brands struggle to understand fragmented and unpredictable shopper journeys.
In this session from the 2025 Quirk’s Event – Virtual Global, Cristina Marinucci, global VP, insights and analytics, Mondelēz International, explains how the research industry has plenty of data and emphasizes that the challenge is using it meaningfully to connect with consumers.
Session transcript
Marlen Ramirez
Hi everyone, and welcome to the session, “Mondelēz International Virtual Global Session: Elevating and connecting insights from media to shelf.”
I'm Quirks News and Content Editor Marlen Ramirez, and before we get started, let's quickly go over the ways you can participate in today's discussion. You can use the chat tab to interact with other attendees during the session, and you can use the Q and A tab to submit questions for the presenters during the session.
Our session is presented to you by Mondelēz International. Enjoy the presentation.
Cristina Marinucci
Good morning everyone. I'm Cristina Marinucci and I'm thrilled to be here with you today. I'm excited to share a powerful shift that we see happening in how we connect media signals with purchase behavior. Our goal today is to elevate how we think about insights, not as isolated data points, but as actionable systems that drive conversion.
Hopefully you're familiar with many of our iconic brands here at Mondelēz. From Oreo to Belvita, Chips Ahoy, Ritz, we have something for everyone. I wanted to start with a stat that may be surprising: 80% of snack buyers are influenced by digital content, yet fewer than 20% of brands can directly connect media exposure to in-store or online purchase. Let's just let that sink in for a minute. I think as marketers and insights leaders, we're investing billions in media content and engagement, but in most cases, we can't confidently prove whether it's changed someone's actual shop and behavior. It's like launching arrows in the dark and hoping you hit the target. This stat really sets the stage for our discussion today. There's a massive media investment happening, but commercial connection is often unclear. We're good at storytelling, but weak on closing that loop. So today we'll focus in on how to build that bridge.
So quick question for you all. How many of you feel truly confident that your company can trace a digital impression all the way to a physical or online sale?
If you are in the minority here, you're not alone, and that's what we're here to change, hopefully. Technology is making consumers lives easier with seven in 10 global consumers stating that it helps them get ahead. As consumer devices become smarter, they're transitioning from nearly sensing to truly anticipating. And in the future, data collected by various devices will be integrated into complete personal profiles, which will unlock nuanced needs and behavior predictions at micro levels. Such ecosystems will be ubiquitous in the next iteration of connected life that is just around the corner.
We often assume a more linear funnel, but reality looks a bit more like this, a bit more messy, fragmented, circular, certainly unpredictable. Today's shopper journey looks less like a funnel and more like a game of pinball. As you can see that omnichannel behavior is just standard behavior now. One day a consumer might discover a new product through a TikTok creator, and the next they search it on Amazon, then compare prices on target, but ultimately buy it in their local Walmart store. That path is chaotic and it's highly personable, varying from demographic and moment. As one strategist said, “Consumers aren't walking through funnels, they're carving their own trails, and our job is to illuminate that trail and influence it.” But how do we do that? Well, with data of course, and retail media is playing a growing role in directing those journeys.
So again, what connects this fragmented, circular and unpredictable reality our consumers experience? Data, and how we use it. The phrase data is the new oil is widely attributed to Clive Humby, a British mathematician and architect of the Tesco Clubcard loyalty program. He's believed to have first used this phrase in 2006, emphasizing that data, like oil, is valuable but unrefined until processed.
Our data is also siloed and fragmented and not integrated. Our industry often splits media and commerce into two separate camps, and while that may have worked in a more linear world, it is not working as it should be. Now with TikTok driving impulse and retail media triggering search, integration is no longer optional. It's table stakes. So, what's creating this divide? Many media KPIs over-index on upper funnel media metrics. Underdeveloped infrastructures for full sales attribution therefore exist, and we see lagging shopper signal integration.
Media and sales live in these separate worlds. We measure impressions, click through rates, video views on one side, but struggle to connect them back to iROAS incrementality or even penetration. Why? Because our systems, teams and KPIs are often not aligned. Imagine trying to coach a football team where the offense and the defense don't share a playbook. That's how most marketing and commercial teams are operating today. Think about your own organization. Are your media and shopper teams using the same scorecard, or do they operate in parallel? Each claiming their own success but not necessarily creating that synergy?
How do we bridge that gap? One way is through precision exposure. Precision media isn't about blasting audiences. It's about matching context, timing and intent. Retail media is turning into the new shopper marketing battleground because it's so close to conversion. The good news is we've never had more powerful tools for precision targeting as we do now with these retail media platforms like Amazon, Instacart, Walmart Connect, they all allow us to hit consumers at that exact moment when they're deciding what to buy. This isn't just advertising, it's contextual commerce. It's TikTok videos that are instantly shoppable. Pinterest pins that lead straight to SKUs. We're embedding the shelf into that scroll. Think of it like placing a product on the consumer's path right as they reach for their wallet.
Mapping consumer behavior across channels is difficult, as we know, although crucial for understanding the complete customer journey and it requires aligning data partnerships, not just systems. All of this is enabled by mapping behavior or stitching together those digital consumer breadcrumbs across channels. That means aligning data partnerships, not just systems. We need one view of the consumer before, during and after the impression. It isn't about just measuring the exposure. We need to map those next moves. Did they engage? Did they add it to car? Did they end up visiting a store? We do this through loyalty data, geo testing and e-commerce click streams.
It's about connecting those media signals to behavioral footprints, the challenges in identity resolution, knowing that that person who saw your ad is the same person who made the purchase. This is where smart partnerships, clean rooms and persistent IDs come into play. Our job in behavior mapping is to follow those digital breadcrumbs all the way to the register.
Retail media can certainly prove itself, but only if we elevate what we measure. It's not just about return, it's about repeat, brand and category growth and shopper penetration, as well as others. We really need to upgrade the scorecard and think about other ways to measure value.
Brands can execute closed loop measurements to trace the journey from that initial ad or impression all the way to conversion, which elevates ad performance, and then calculate actual return on ad spend. Retail media networks can match shopper and user data between retailers and off platform touchpoints at that user level within data clean rooms. This enables the analysis of the overlap between ad impressions and conversions, allowing for the reconstruction of a complete shopper journey to inform attribution models.
Let's take an example. Imagine a sports drink brand that is targeting John, a Walmart shopper who uses TikTok and watches Roku TV. John's Walmart shopping data indicates his interest in sports drinks, which prompts this sports drink brand to target him with ads, potentially sending him a TikTok ad to drive awareness of this brand and that ad also shows up on Roku while John is watching his favorite basketball team play. Then, John receives a coupon for this sports drink displayed on his Walmart app homepage. This type of closed loop measurement unlocks deeper insights into buying behavior. In that Walmart example, the brand would gain valuable metrics beyond ROAS, such as the number of new customers acquired, the number of touch points it took to drive a conversion, customer repeat purchase behavior, what else was in the basket, in order to drive partnerships and display adjacency opportunities, et cetera.
Belvita is a great example to illustrate the power of media to shelf connections as well. Belvita needed to win the morning snacking occasions. We combined retail media, sampling and geotargeting to really surround the shopper from shelf to screen. So, what worked here? It wasn't just the targeting, but more so the coordination. Messaging that matched the moment, sampling matched intent and the results proved it. It wasn't just a campaign; it was an ecosystem where the messaging, moment and method aligned. It worked because every signal or tactic reinforce the others and that's where real value emerges.
Beyond the data though, we also need to bring in the trend. These macro forces are shaping how we plan and execute media to shelf strategies. Our media plans need to evolve with culture or risk becoming obsolete.
Three of those underlying trends that I want to highlight today are snackification, smartification and the experience economy. So, snackification is about consumers, especially Gen Z and Millennial, that are increasingly replacing meals with snacks. Some of the drivers here are around convenience and busy lifestyles and the availability of more nutritionally balanced snack options. The impact is an increased demand for snacks that balance, convenience, taste and nutrition featuring more portable packaging and portion control. This trend really blurs the parts of the day, creating more consumption moments and media triggers.
The next is smartification. We know that AI and smart technologies have become and are becoming even more integrated in consumer's lives, anticipating their needs and automating tasks. The impact is that AI is driving media decisions from dynamic targeting to predictive shelf placement. In the future, we'll see personalized AI assistance that will manage routine tasks like grocery shopping, requiring CPG companies and brands to adapt their promotional strategies for both people and AI algorithms.
And the last trend I wanted to surface was this experience economy where consumers are prioritizing experiences over material possessions, seeking more memorable events and interactions. This has increased demand for interactive formats, in real life experiences, digital twins and immersive campaigns. In the future, we'll see these immersive technologies like AR menus and virtual reality food explorations becoming more mainstream, more widespread, where retail stores are featuring multisensory environments to enhance consumer engagement and drive traffic into the stores.
So how do we bring this all together and what does this great look like? High-performing orgs are integrating those signals, decisions and accountability. It's not just about the technology. It is truly cultural. It's also cross-functional, where we see insights, shopper marketing and commercial teams really co-owning those outcomes and building integrated journey views across the organization. That integration is key. With shared metrics across media and retail partners, we can bridge the gap between media and sales KPIs. And it's agile, where insights are constantly flowing back into the strategy to inform it and evolve it. Amazon said, “We don't launch campaigns anymore. We build systems, and those systems must be designed to drive purchase.”
I think we can all agree that we have more than enough data, but we're not always using it to its full potential. The challenge now is connecting it meaningfully. Let's stop admiring the insight and start actually activating it because if it doesn't move the shelf, it doesn't really matter. We need to elevate insights to influence outcomes and use media to move people and product. We need to build systems, not just campaigns. Remember, it all needs to start with the consumer because whoever is closest to the consumer wins. In closing, let's align our teams, tools and truths and build marketing systems that lead to growth, not just impressions. Thank you for your time today.