By Alexandra Theriault, Chief Growth Officer, Lotame

Retail media gets framed as a win for retailers. Which it is. But it’s also quietly rewriting the playbook for consumer packaged goods. For brands that never had direct relationships with customers, never owned the transaction, never got real-time data, this is the closest thing to a reset.

A few years ago, CPGs were treated like the kids in the back of the class. Too slow. Too shelf-bound. Not built for digital. That was the consensus. It’s changed now.

The brands that seemed to be hitting a wall are finding new ways forward. Not with flashy martech stacks. Not with DTC detours. But with something much more pragmatic: first-party signals. Real-time segmentation. Smarter media.

Start with the behavior, not the receipt

Take Eggland’s Best, for example. It’s not a digital native brand. It sells eggs in grocery stores, just like it always has. But it is pulling in over 5 million first-party signals in a single period. Not through sales. Through behavior. Interactive recipe content. Shoppable landing pages. Fun, low-friction quizzes. Every touchpoint gives the brand something to work with. A signal becomes an action that says “this person is interested” or “this person is loyal” or “this person is drifting.”

That data gets put to work fast. Audiences are segmented based on how often they engage, what content they explore, how close they are to becoming loyalists. Those segments get activated, mostly on Meta, with creative tuned to behavior. And it works. Eggland’s Best saw a 5.6 times lift in ad recall. Not because they chased frequency. Because they chased relevance.

Loyalty programs aren’t enough anymore

 Traditional CPG loyalty often leans on coupons, emails, or points systems. But they rely too heavily on habit — the assumption that customers will keep coming back for the same essentials: shampoo, detergent, eggs.

Eggland’s Best went deeper. It focused on shoppers with inconsistent purchase behavior, those who float in and out based on seasonality, pricing, or what’s on the shelf that week. Instead of writing them off as churn, it saw them as opportunity.

By mapping digital signals to real-world behavior, it built a lightweight but powerful playbook. One that worked across the full shopper journey, from first click to future fan. One that did not rely on a DTC storefront or retailer handoff to build data muscle.

Less noise, more learnings

 What makes the Eggland’s Best story interesting is not the scale. It is the shift in approach. The brand moved from batch-and-blast to segment-and-learn. 

It also developed a repeatable system. One that helps convert passive shoppers into what the brand calls Egg-vocates. That might sound like a gimmick, but it points to something real. A customer who engages consistently, responds to personalized content, and becomes a long-term contributor to loyalty and sales.

Retail media gave CPGs the window. But it is this kind of work, quiet, data-driven, pragmatic, that is turning that window into a runway.

Final thought

 This is not about chasing some idealized full-funnel journey. Most CPGs are never going to own the point of sale. That’s fine. The goal is not to rebuild the stack from scratch. The goal is to get sharper with what already exists through smart partnerships.

Start with what people are already doing. Engaging with recipes, clicking through social, scanning QR codes, answering quizzes. Build from there. Capture the signal, even if it’s incomplete. Use it to segment. Test. Learn. Adjust. Repeat. Treat media as a feedback mechanism, not just a distribution channel.

The CPGs that win will be those with technology tailored to their unique use cases — those with the clearest view of intent, the most precise activation logic, and the discipline to learn in real time.

The retail media revolution is about sustained performance. Quiet iteration. Audience understanding at scale. That’s what will separate the brands that grow from the ones that stay reactive.

Every signal is a decision point. The smart CPGs are already using them. The rest need to catch up.