Consumer packaged goods (CPG) marketers often struggle to accurately measure the return on investment (ROI) of promotions, especially in-store sales, which still account for about 80% of total sales despite the rise of e-commerce. On November 3, Ibotta introduced LiveLift, a tool designed to address this challenge.
LiveLift is an in-flight campaign measurement and optimization platform that analyzes billions of transactions from over 80 retailers, including Walmart, Instacart, and DoorDash. It compares groups of consumers exposed to campaigns with those who are not, to assess baseline sales and incremental lift generated by promotions.
The tool has been tested by major CPG companies like Kimberly-Clark and Hain Celestial, as well as beverage brand Liquid Death, which reported a 19% sales lift and a 23% increase in daily units sold during its LiveLift pilot. Benoit Vatere, Liquid Death’s Chief Media Officer, called the tool a “no-brainer” for optimizing promotional spend toward incremental sales.
“To be able to optimize toward incrementality and to put promo dollars against incremental sales, and really guide what kind of incremental goals you want to hit, we couldn’t do that [before],” Vatere said.
Ibotta plans to expand LiveLift with features that enhance measurement frequency and optimization, aiming to improve CPG performance marketing. Bryan Leach, Ibotta’s CEO and founder, emphasized that LiveLift fills a gap by providing the precise measurement common in digital marketing to digital promotions as well.
“LiveLift enables brands to reinvent their national promotion strategy, allowing them to drive incremental volume at scale with control and efficiency,” Leach stated.
For Liquid Death, traditionally focused on top-of-funnel marketing without significant media buys, LiveLift helps drive consumers through the funnel with targeted price reduction promos, increasing incremental revenue. Vatere highlighted the challenge of uncontrolled promotions reaching customers who would have purchased anyway, which drives up costs needlessly.
“If you start getting promos in the hand of someone that was planning to buy anyway… it becomes very expensive,” he noted.
LiveLift’s rollout follows Ibotta’s recent partnership with analytics firm Circana to utilize AI-powered Household Lift measurement. Circana’s studies showed Ibotta campaigns outperform category benchmarks for incremental sales. For Liquid Death, LiveLift-powered campaigns are key to strengthening lower-funnel efforts despite a smaller budget than larger beverage companies.
“The biggest issue with smaller brands is thinking because they have less dollars, they should just be in the lower funnel,” Vatere said. “You need to have both. The mix has to always be the same, [but] the dollar amounts will vary.”