May 9, 2026
For most CPG leaders, the question isn’t whether to invest in trade, it’s how to make sure it pays back.
Every year, billions are spent on promotions, displays and activations designed to win at the shelf. But here’s the uncomfortable truth: if you can’t see what actually happened in-store, you can’t measure your return.
In 2025, commercial performance isn’t just driven by brand strength or brilliant promotions, it’s driven by execution visibility. What happens on the shelf, in the cooler or at the counter directly determines whether your commercial bets deliver ROI.
And yet, most brands still treat retail execution data as a series of fragmented snapshots, disconnected from RGM, TPM and the broader commercial strategy.
That’s where Image Recognition (IR) changes the picture. By translating shelf photos into live, SKU-level data, it gives CPGs a real-time view of execution performance across channels and connects it directly to commercial outcomes.
The gap between what’s planned and what’s executed is often far bigger than we think.
One global beverage company assumed that 90% of its promotions were executed in-store. When they finally captured visibility, the real number was closer to 52%. That 40-point gap explained why uplift never matched expectations, despite flawless plans and heavy investment.
Across categories, the story repeats:
As one trade marketing director told me recently: “We’re flying blind until the Nielsen data comes in and by then it’s too late to act.”
Many CPGs are now reframing how they view commercial execution. One of the largest global players captured it perfectly in its vision statement:
“Enhance our Route To Market strategies by leveraging Image Recognition and AI to provide accurate visibility at scale and actionable insights into our Market, Customers and our Business, to improve execution and grow revenue.”
That’s exactly what IR enables. It doesn’t just help you see the shelf, it lets you prove whether your investments actually executed and delivered a return.
For RGM and TPM teams, this becomes transformative:
IR shifts commercial management from being plan-based to reality-based. It replaces assumptions with proof and turns execution visibility into a measurable growth lever.
Once shelves are digitised, accountability becomes instant. IR delivers the kind of commercial visibility that turns spend into strategy:
In practice: A leading beverage company rolled out IR across its convenience channels to verify promotional compliance. Field teams now receive immediate feedback after setup, boosting execution rates and enabling real-time reallocation of promotional budgets, improving ROI mid-campaign instead of post-mortem.
When IR data flows into RGM and TPM systems, execution visibility becomes a strategic growth driver, not just a diagnostic tool.
In practice: A global CPG integrated IR signals from shelf, cooler and backroom locations directly into its demand planning system. Replenishment accuracy rose from 88% to 92%, eliminating chronic over/under-ordering and recovering millions in working capital.
Beyond compliance, IR gives brands a real-time competitive advantage, something traditional data sources simply can’t match.
This turns execution visibility into a live feed of category intelligence, enabling faster, evidence-based commercial decisions.
The good news? This no longer requires a heavy IT lift. The most effective CPGs don’t add another platform, they embed IR directly into their existing stack:
Integration timelines that once took months now take weeks. The difference is that IR has become a plug-in capability, not a standalone system.
When you link execution visibility to commercial strategy, the outcomes are tangible and measurable:
As one RGM director told me: “We’ve gone from hoping our promotions worked, to knowing they worked and knowing why.”
Three forces are making IR-powered commercial strategy a necessity, not a luxury:
In short, the technology has caught up with the commercial need and the timing couldn’t be better.
This article closes out our series on the Four Strategic Levers of Retail Execution in 2025.
If you missed the earlier instalments, start with From Compliance to Growth: Why Smarter Audits Drive Retail Execution, where I explored how intelligent audit automation creates visibility and speed across the shelf.
Then explore Field Force Optimisation: From Data Collectors to Sales Drivers and Inventory Optimisation: Closing the Loop Between Shelf and Supply Chain, where we looked at connecting execution to operations.
In this final piece, we’ve come full circle, showing how Image Recognition connects every element of retail execution to commercial impact and measurable ROI.
It’s an exciting time for CPGs that want to run smarter, leaner and more connected businesses. The brands that win next year won’t be the ones that spend the most, but the ones that see the most.
Remus Pop, CRO & Co-Founder
.svg){kind=logo}
.svg)
.svg)