At Groceryshop last week, a panel featuring leaders from Danone, Mondelēz, Bobbi
By Melissa Burdick · October 1, 2026 · Curated by George's Blog
At Groceryshop last week, a panel featuring leaders from Danone, Mondelēz, Bobbie, and Henkel shared a striking stat: one manufacturer drove 70% of growth from digital, even though digital was only 15% of their business.
That's not surprising. As the funnel keeps fragmenting, brands need integrated media, a clear operating model, and focused brand building that connects every touchpoint into one journey they can actually optimize.
In an interview with The CPG Guys, Luke Balestri and I kept coming back to the same problem: brands jump to optimization before they've solved for visibility. You can't optimize a strategy you can't see.
I made that same point again at Instacart's Content Studio: retail media only works as one cohesive strategy, not a series of disconnected buys.
Five more takeaways from the show:
1. Capability building beats media buying. That same Digital Commerce Global panel found buying more media only gets you to average — the brands pulling ahead are building new ways of working and smarter data activation, like one dashboard instead of dozens. Their estimate: soft capabilities like these are worth ~$3.5M per $50M in turnover. Not a rounding error.
2. Master four shelves, not one: physical, digital, social, agentic. One brand story, transmitted consistently across every channel — that's what builds recognition.
3. Agentic shopping is reshaping visibility. 60% of shoppers use AI for grocery decisions, per our own Groceryshop 2026 research. LLM visibility doesn't come from shelf placement — it comes from community conversation (Reddit, social, Wikipedia). Your visibility in the agentic funnel depends on community proof, not market share.
4. Outcomes are the new categories. Competitive sets now sprawl across aisles based on what the shopper is solving for, often in a single session on a single platform. Connect media to outcomes to win here.
5. Only 31% of retail media network leaders think their networks are competitive with peers — down 14% year over year — and 7 in 10 say they're struggling to keep pace on pricing and capabilities. More features, worse measurement. Smart brands are closing that gap with an Agentic Commerce Grid, powered by Pacvue Prism.
The real theme of Groceryshop: retail success doesn't hinge on one technology or tactic. It depends on speed, precision, and connection.
The brands that connect their efforts, kill the siloes, and build brand equity will win grocery in Q4 and beyond.