NielsenIQ (NIQ) has launched 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.

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
• Optimisation Intelligence – enabling continuous improvement.

Together, these capabilities are designed to form the intelligence layer that allows AI systems to move from approximation to precision.

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.

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, Ms Lovallo Ceppos will lead NIQ’s AI commerce product strategy and the continued development of the Commerce Lab.