Want the cheat sheet on how people worldwide actually buy groceries, beauty, and household essentials online right now? Our new Global CPG Pulse 2025 has the intel, pulled from our commerce data and our Q2 2025 Criteo Shopper Survey across the US, UK, France, Germany, Japan, and South Korea. We analyzed traffic and billions of transactions across hundreds of retailers and brands, then layered in consumer survey responses to see what really nudges a cart to checkout. Read on for a preview and grab the full report for all the charts and smarts.
Brand loyalty is loose — especially in treats and cleaning
Up to 70% of buyers were new to brand in the past year, with the most switching in Candy & Chocolate and Household Cleaning. Translation: shoppers are auditioning brands every week, leaving the door open for marketers to win new customers with the right mix of visibility, tailored messaging, and competitive offers.
What you can do:
- Maximize visibility for challenger and emerging brands with onsite display and video ads to capture shoppers in brand-switching mode.
- Activate prospecting campaigns with competitive offers and personalized creatives to convert high-intent shoppers open to trying something new.
More tabs, more brands in play
When shoppers browse across multiple retailers, they view up to 80% more brands than when they stick to a single site. More tabs equal more competitors on stage — and more chances for you to appear.
What you can do:
- Run multi-retailer and offsite retail media campaigns. Stay visible throughout the shopper journey and intercept switching behavior with timely, targeted placements.
- Use audience signals to identify in-market browsers and push them to wherever your products are sold with competitive creatives that position your brand as the standout choice during high-consideration moments.
Ads flip the buy switch — and momentum is up
About 1 in 2 CPG shoppers say ads motivated a purchase. Year over year, that share jumped notably in key markets — +14pp in the UK, +8pp in Germany, +7pp in the US. Ads are driving trial, impulse adds, and incremental growth.
What you can do:
- Keep full-funnel on. Blend awareness with conversion tactics for continuity from browse to buy.
- Use high-impact placements and personalized recommendations to trigger impulse buys and brand trial at the point of sale.
Specialty retailers attract higher-value shoppers
Shoppers who go beyond big-box — shopping specialty only or specialty plus large retailers — purchase from more partners, place more orders, and spend more per order and in total than large-retailer-only shoppers. In short, specialty shoppers are gold.
What you can do:
- Ensure coverage in specialty environments. Use a mix of formats to ensure strong presence across both large and specialty retailers.
- Capture attention early in the journey with optimized product content, targeted ads, and brand storytelling.
CPG grows baskets — and helps more carts cross the finish line
Baskets with CPG items are workhorses. In a 6-month period, shoppers buy 3.4 times as many units and make around 10% more transactions on CPG items than non-CPG items. The result is that total spend on CPG is roughly 30% higher, demonstrating how affordable essentials build bigger baskets and drive revenue. Baskets with CPG items also have a 9% lower abandonment rate, showing that essentials make a checkout completion more likely.
What you can do:
- Use essentials as the “cart stabilizer.” Feature them in bundles and cart-builder modules. Target retailer audiences who have added to cart but have not purchased.
- Retarget with CPG-led creatives. Emphasize utility and urgency to recover abandons, using essentials as a lever to drive final conversion.
Get the full CPG Pulse
This was the highlight reel. For more insights — including spending plans and the impact of AI-assisted product research — download the Global CPG Pulse 2025 and turn these insights into your next quarter’s wins.
