NIQ Strengthens Its Industry-Leading Data Foundations: The 2025 CRM Conversation Starters

The business mantra this year is “Work smarter, not harder.” And few companies understand that or enable it as much as NIQ.

NIQ is the one of the world’s largest consumer intelligence companies, with operations in more than 100 markets, covering more than 90 percent of the world’s population. It delivers a complete understanding of consumer buying behavior and new pathways to growth powered by advanced analytics and state-of-the-art platforms.

Originally known as NielsenIQ, the Chicago-based firm in the past year really expanded its reach through a number of key partnerships, including a recent deal with WeArisma, a creator marketing measurement and optimization platform provider. Metrics from creator campaigns tracked through WeArisma are incorporated into NIQ’s Marketing Mix Models, helping advertisers understand the impact of paid and organic creator marketing.

Another arrangement with the Trade Desk integrated NIQ’s consumer intelligence and global insights on shopping behavior into the Trade Desk’s platform to help marketers plan and activate ad campaigns. It delivers new shopper-based audiences derived from omnichannel shopping data, digital purchase data, and advanced audiences and geo-targeting capabilities to reach audiences by location based on consumer, retailer, and market data.

Then, a partnership with OpenBrand, a market measurement and competitive intelligence provider, resulted in a product suite that provides clients with actionable intelligence into their omnichannel market performance. The new product suite brings together artificial intelligence-driven analytics with multi-sourced datasets, such as point-of-sale and consumer panel data, to help manufacturers and retailers resolve critical issues such as masking, sample bias, timeliness, and disconnected data.

Also on the partnership front, NIQ teamed up with Pacvue, a commerce acceleration platform provider, to help companies using the Pacvue platform access insights to boost the reach and depth of their e-commerce strategies. At the same time, NIQ also partnered with Skai, provider of an omnichannel advertising platform specializing in commerce media, bringing its Digital Shelf insights, including data on product content, inventory, pricing, promotions, and more, into Skai’s platform. Further collaboration will explore synergies between Skai Decision Pro’s forecasting capabilities and NIQ’s Media Mix Modeling solutions.

NIQ further expanded its datasets in April when it acquired Gastrograph AI, providers of a discovery and inquiry platform for sensory insights. Gastrograph used predictive AI to help companies develop, test, and reformulate products by modeling human sensory perception of flavor, aroma, and texture.

NIQ also worked organically to expand the insights it offers clients, starting with an expansion of its Omnishopper panel with four times the number of Gen Z consumers and households with children and a growing number of ethnic groups. It now draws from more than 8 billion consumer purchases, integrating both online and offline data from every panel participant. It also includes faster analytics, visibility into 5,000 previously unreportable brands, and new product integrations.

NIQ in February launched Strategic Analytics & Insights, unifying its four key practice areas: Consumer Behavior and Insights, BASES, Brand & Media, and Analytics & Activation to help develop growth road maps for clients.

Also new this year is BASES AI Screener, combining NIQ’s consumer panel datasets, innovation database, and predictive models with AI to mimic human reactions for idea screening.

And finally, NIQ expanded NIQ Product Insights (NPI), which provides a catalog detailing the specific product attributes, such as dietary, sustainability, and clean-label characteristics, for which consumers search when they shop. NPI is also being expanded to 25 additional markets worldwide.

NPI also now empowers companies to stay ahead of global macroeconomic challenges, such as regulatory standards, tariffs, shifting consumer preferences, and category trends with granular product-level data.

Ramon Melgarejo, president of Strategic Analytics & Insights at NIQ, this year noted that “at NIQ, our mission is to uncover what people want and why, and we do that by combining our strengths in revenue growth management, brand strategy, consumer insights, precision activation, and innovation.”