CHICAGO, April 23 — NielsenIQ (NYSE: NIQ) today announced the launch of NIQ Commerce Lab, where the company is building the technology infrastructure for AI-driven commerce. The Lab will develop the data platforms, APIs, and measurement systems that power how products are discovered, evaluated, and purchased in AI-mediated environments.
This includes what the industry often refers to as agentic commerce, but extends across quick commerce, social commerce, and other emerging channels—where AI is becoming the common layer shaping how consumers navigate choices and how decisions are made in real time.
AI systems are rapidly moving from supporting decisions to making them—playing an increasingly central role in how commerce operates. Their effectiveness depends on the intelligence behind them.
AI is Becoming the Operating Layer of Global Commerce
NIQ ensures that the intelligence behind these systems is accurate, complete, and grounded in real-world behavior—reflecting how consumers actually buy, what products are really available, and how markets operate.
Across the industry, however, the data and measurement required to support this shift remains incomplete. Product data is inconsistent, real-world purchasing behavior is fragmented, availability signals are unreliable, and measurement lacks objectivity. These gaps limit the accuracy, trust, and scalability of AI-driven commerce—and can determine whether products are represented, recommended, or overlooked entirely.
Building the Intelligence Layer for Agentic Commerce
The NIQ Commerce Lab will advance a core pillar of NIQ’s AI strategy: Commerce Intelligence.
Commerce Intelligence is NIQ’s approach to bringing together the full range of signals that shape the market—product, consumer, and retailer data—into a unified system that can understand complex dynamics and power AI-driven decisions that were previously out of reach.
“NIQ has built the data infrastructure for how commerce actually works,” said Jim Peck, Chairman and CEO of NIQ. “Enabled by AI, we are making a fundamental shift—from measurement and analytics to reading signals in real time and acting on them with confidence. Commerce Intelligence is how we will deliver the intelligence layer the market will depend on, today and in the future.”
Through the Commerce Lab, NIQ will address six interconnected opportunities required to make Commerce Intelligence real at scale, including:
- Preference Intelligence — understanding what consumers want
- Product Intelligence — ensuring products are accurately represented
- Availability Intelligence — connecting recommendations to real-world inventory
- Purchase Verification — validating what was actually bought
- Channel Measurement — establishing objective performance and ROI
- Optimization Intelligence — enabling continuous improvement
Together, these capabilities are designed to form the intelligence layer that allows AI systems to move from approximation to precision.
Why NIQ
NIQ is uniquely advantaged to build Commerce Intelligence at global scale, combining the data infrastructure, retailer relationships, and neutrality required to fuel AI-driven decisions in commerce.
- Proprietary Data Infrastructure: NIQ operates data pipelines that ingest point-of-sale transactions from thousands of retailers across nearly every country where commerce happens. This is a technology asset that cannot be recreated by any platform, retailer, or new entrant within the relevant time horizon.
- Structured Product Knowledge at Scale: NIQ’s product catalog represents hundreds of millions of items enriched with billions of structured attributes, generated and maintained by thousands of AI models running continuously. This is the system AI agents need to resolve consumer intent to specific products.
- Closed-Loop Measurement: NIQ links behavior across platforms, channels, and retailers to verified purchase outcomes. This is the measurement infrastructure the category requires to function, and no platform with commercial interests in the transaction can credibly provide it.
- Neutral Advantaged Technology Partner: As an independent party with no retail operation, no advertising platform, and no channel conflict, NIQ is the go-to infrastructure provider participants can trust with the data the market requires.
Enabling the Next Phase of Commerce
The Commerce Lab will serve to develop the intelligence infrastructure to:
- Identify emerging commerce signals and dynamics shaping how decisions are made
- Develop new data and measurement capabilities
- Run pilot programs to understand agentic purchasing behavior
- Partner across the AI and commerce ecosystem
- Establish emerging industry standards
Leadership
NIQ is accelerating its AI agenda with the appointment of Lisa Lovallo Ceppos as Head of AI Commerce. Joining from Google, where she led product strategy for ad effectiveness measurement and Google Maps integration into Vertex AI, Lovallo Ceppos will lead NIQ’s AI commerce product strategy and the continued development of the Commerce Lab—further cementing NIQ’s position at the forefront of Commerce Intelligence.
