November 17, 2025
Chris Dungan
If you're in CPG right now, you're watching your category data and the news with growing caution. Recent fluctuations in SNAP funding created a meaningful financial squeeze for millions of households ahead of the holidays. We're seeing it in our unique first-party retail data that both channel mix and basket composition have been affected.
For CPGs, this presents a significant obstacle. You're being asked to drive volume and protect share while budgets are under scrutiny, your promotional ROI is being questioned, and the market conditions keep shifting underneath you.
Why SNAP impacts US households
When households feel financial pressure this rapidly, shopping patterns change fast. SNAP and financially stressed households are more inclined to seek out value, but they're spending less per visit and reducing discretionary spending. They're moving aggressively into value channels like Walmart, dollar stores, and SNAP-enabled online retailers. These aren't marginal shifts. They're showing up in basket composition, redemption rates, and category performance week over week.
The risk for CPG brands is clear - if you're not present in the channels where these households are now shopping, you're at risk of losing share. Analysis of Ibotta’s first-party data confirms a divergence in spending. While discretionary categories saw unit declines, essential categories like canned goods, boxed meals, rice, and pasta trended inversely, posting a 22% increase in unit sales period-over-period.
The macro trends are there, but if your promotional strategy doesn't account for nuances across categories and micro behaviors, you're missing out.
The role of promotions
Here's the tension you're likely feeling: Promotions are strategically imperative for growth, but measuring their return on investment draws scrutiny from finance. You know it’s critical to support consumers during challenging periods, but you're also being asked to prove every dollar of promotional spend is truly incremental. You're being told to protect margin while also driving volume. It's not an easy balance. Every promotional dollar should be accountable.
The reality is that promotions are invaluable in these scenarios, both for consumers and for your business. They're helping families afford the products they need. That's the human truth. But they're also bringing lapsed shoppers back, reducing churn, and capturing incremental trips that would otherwise go to competitors or private label. The brands that show up with meaningful value during financial stress build affinity that extends well beyond the immediate crisis.
The challenge isn't whether to promote; it's how to make every promotional dollar count when you can't afford leakage, when you're being asked to defend your budget allocation to finance, and when waiting several months for campaign insights means the market has already moved on.
How brands are navigating SNAP
We've been working closely with CPG partners through this volatility, and the brands that are holding their ground — or even gaining share — are doing a few things consistently. Moments like this are difficult to navigate, especially ahead of the holiday shopping season, but can provide opportunities to reinforce your relationship with consumers and come out stronger. Here’s what we’re seeing.
Follow the data. As household budgets tighten, consumers are increasingly motivated by value and seek out promotions like cash back. In the Dollar channel, our analysis found that cash back offers drove a 30% increase in units on offer purchased per trip. The most successful brands are ensuring their offers are natively present and discoverable in these high-traffic environments. It’s not just about broad distribution; it’s securing visibility in the specific retailers where budget-conscious decisions are being made, ensuring you capture volume rather than losing the trip to private label.
Consistent, targeted presence. Volatility doesn't follow a set schedule — and neither do the needs of consumers. Winning brands are maintaining consistent, targeted incentives to ensure they are the reliable choice whenever a budget conscious consumer walks into a store or shops online. Because our pay-per-sale model drives profitable revenue growth and limits investment to verified sales, these brands can afford to stay active, ensuring they never miss a shopper looking to solve a budget challenge.
Margin protection via insights. Larger formats like multipacks and family sizes naturally deliver value to consumers without requiring deep discounts, reducing the pressure to fund aggressive promotions. Flexible, performance-based offer structures then ensure that any investment you do make is deployed efficiently, allowing you to scale support up or down based on real-time results. Together, they create a margin-positive approach where value sizing limits exposure and smart offer design ensures every dollar is working toward incremental growth.
Measure continuously. Ibotta's LiveLift™ measurement provides visibility into incremental sales within weeks, not months. When you can show finance exactly which retailers and offers are driving true incremental sales, it's easier to defend your promotional spend and make the case for reallocation. In volatile environments, that visibility is the difference between reactive firefighting and strategic optimization.
The measurement advantage (when you need it most)
The industry standard for promotional measurement still comes with months of lag time. By the time you get your read on what worked, market conditions have already shifted. This is exactly where Ibotta's approach makes a material difference. We see shopper behavior and promotional performance as it’s happening, and that visibility can fundamentally change what you do. When redemption patterns spike or basket composition changes, we can identify it quickly and help you adjust accordingly. When a particular retailer or SKU is driving outsized incremental sales, we can amplify that investment while it still matters.
Integrating third-party measurement from partners like Circana and ABCS with our LiveLift solution offers crucial, validated data, which lends credibility during budget negotiations with finance. That external credibility gives leadership the confidence to act quickly instead of waiting longer for more data. In an environment this unpredictable, that speed and validation is a competitive advantage.
The big takeaways
Consumers are under real financial strain right now, and promotions are one of the few levers that meaningfully helps them manage tighter budgets while staying connected to the categories and brands they care about.
For you as a marketer, this isn't just about short-term volume defense; it's about capturing incremental sales, reducing churn, and building loyalty during a period when households are making difficult trade-offs. It's about using data to understand which offers are truly driving incremental sales and optimizing toward the outcomes that matter to your business.
We know this moment requires empathy, precision, and flexibility all at once. You're being asked to move fast while also being careful with every dollar. You're supporting consumers while defending your budget. You're optimizing in flight while building long-term loyalty. It's a lot.
Our job is to make that manageable. Plan for continued volatility with us. Optimize in flight with visibility you can trust. Ensure every promotional dollar delivers incremental sales while genuinely supporting the consumers who need it most. We've helped CPG partners navigate moments like this before, and we're here to help you do the same.
