Loyalty Is Up for Grabs: How CPG Brands Can Lock In Guaranteed Incremental Revenue in Q4 and Beyond
Adapted from a session at Groceryshop 2026 by Matt Knust, VP, Practice Lead (CPG), InMarket
Most Q4 media plans are built on an assumption that doesn’t survive the quarter: that the customers you believe are loyal to your brand in September will still be your customers in November & December.
Every year, brands treat loyalty as a fixed asset, something earned and banked. But Q4 is exactly when loyalty can shift the most. Higher prices, tighter budgets, and a flood of competing advertising all hit shoppers at once, right as they decide who gets their holiday spend. Here are the three things CPG marketers should take from that.
1. A quarter of the category is actively shopping for a reason to switch
InMarket’s 2026 Holiday Shopping InSights report puts hard numbers on the movement. Seventy percent of shoppers say higher prices have already changed their holiday shopping plans, and 26% say they plan to trade down to budget or store brands.1
More pointed for CPG: nearly 1 in 5 shoppers say in-store advertising is what introduced them to a new brand.1 Among Gen Z, it’s 31%.1 Loyalty isn’t just softening at the margins. It’s being won and lost in real time, in the aisle.
That reframes the Q4 question. It isn’t “how do we protect our loyal customers?” It’s “how do we make sure we’re the brand capturing that movement instead of losing to it?”
2. Post-campaign measurement arrives too late to change anything
When buyers are shifting across brands and price tiers this quickly, a Q4 budget is aimed at a target moving underneath it. The plan built in September assumes shopper behavior that may not hold by November.
And most brands don’t find out whether the media campaign worked until 6-10 weeks after the campaign ends. You run the campaign, wait for the reporting cycle, and by the time you have a real read on incrementality, the budget is spent. If it worked, you can’t act on that until next year. If it didn’t, the window is gone and the investment did not drive the impact you needed.
That’s the structural problem: plans built on a snapshot, measured against a moving market, reviewed in a rearview mirror. The fix isn’t better hindsight; it’s moving the read forward. InMarket’s Guaranteed iROAS solution commits to the iROAS upfront, before the campaign runs, and delivers real-time, retailer-level visibility while it’s live: basket size, purchase frequency, true incremental sales, new versus returning customers. The guarantee gives you certainty going in. Live data lets you optimize mid-flight, while you still have budget left to spend better.
3. The incremental revenue lives with lost and lapsed shoppers
A national paper goods brand ran this model this year, targeting category buyers alongside lost and lapsed customers, the shoppers most in play during a season like this one.
The result: an $8.68 iROAS, 323% above the guarantee set going in, and $1.74 million in incremental sales on a single campaign.
Two things are worth pulling out. First, the iROAS guarantee functioned as a floor, not a ceiling. The brand cleared it by a wide margin precisely because mid-flight visibility let the team lean into what was working while the campaign was still running, down to which audiences converted, which creative pulled its weight, and which placements earned the spend. That’s the difference between knowing a campaign is performing and knowing why, in time to act.
Second, the audience strategy carried as much weight as the media. Lapsed buyers are the shoppers most receptive to switching back, or switching away, during Q4. Targeting them isn’t a nice-to-have. It’s where the incremental revenue actually is.
The takeaway for this quarter and beyond
Loyalty is going to shift whether your brand participates or not. The brands that come out ahead won’t be the ones with the biggest Q4 budget. They’ll be the ones who guaranteed their return before the campaign started and had the visibility to protect it while it was still running.
If you’re planning Q4 media right now and there’s no guarantee attached to it, that’s the conversation worth having. Reach out to us to talk through what a guaranteed campaign looks like for your brand this quarter.
¹Source: InMarket study conducted in partnership with Kantar, who provided the sample data. Based on an online survey of 1,983 US adults fielded in July 2026 and weighted to US Census demographics.