October 9, 2025
Ibotta CRO Chris Riedy and Michael Ellgass, Circana’s VP of Global Retail Media met on the Groceryshop floor to discuss the newly announced strategic partnership between the two companies. This collaboration is poised to transform how brands measure and prove the return on investment of their promotional spend. For the first time, CPG brands on the Ibotta Performance Network (IPN) will be able to get a validated view of the true incremental sales from their promotional campaigns from Circana. Check out the full video and read the highlights below to understand the significance of this partnership.*
Q: What gave you the confidence that working with Ibotta could be a good idea?
Ellgass: What's difficult in the role that we [Circana] play is we report the news. Sometimes the news isn't good. So when you choose us as a partner, you're stuck with this impartiality that we bring. But, we have seen enough work with you now to prove to me the efficacy of how you go to market and the effectiveness. To be able to tell that story and be a part of transforming the promotions industry is super exciting for me. I’m really proud of the partnership.
Q: We've had some pilot campaigns going, we've been measuring, and we've got some results. What do they look like?
Ellgass: Well, what's tough about results is we have customers we've dealt with for years and so they know how to ask really tough methodology questions and pressure test things. What we’re seeing is results that are well above our benchmarks. So, then you have to justify if we feel good and ask if we have the right answer here? I think what we’re seeing is a data set so robust and you’re targeting in effective ways. It [the results] shouldn’t be surprising then when you have the right customer segment with the right message and you provide an incentive to take action.
Q: Can you explain how Circana measures incrementality with Ibotta?
Ellgass: The methodology we're taking with Ibotta is to truly understand what people's experience was prior to being exposed [to the offer]. That's where we can feel so good about the view of incrementality. It's not a perfect science, but it's extraordinarily accurate to a 99% significance.
Q: One thing we always talk about is how marketers are feeling that they don’t have in-the-moment data to work with. How critical is speed in measurement?
Ellgass: Speed is incredibly important. Especially because a lot of what I really believe in is always-on campaigns. There’s seasons where you have to drive things, but there needs to be a cadence of what you’re doing… What we’re doing with this partnership is integrating the way our data comes together. The Ibotta ad exposure comes to us in real time and the retailer transaction data that we have comes in real time. So, we have built models that can run very quickly and then be inspected before delivery. This business [promotions] tended to have an SLA that was 8-10 weeks. Nobody wants to wait that long. Our aspiration is to build a system that will give us results roughly a week after the post-campaign period is over… We want to provide the fastest returns in the industry together and that’s what makes the partnership pretty special.