Dive Brief:

• Nielsen will launch a new measurement service that taps e-commerce sales data from more than a dozen large retailers including Target, Peapod and Giant Eagle. 
• The service will combine partner retailers’ actual sales figures with data culled from consumer “panels” that tabulate millions of receipts. 
• E-commerce sales of CPG brands jumped 42% last year, according to figures from longtime Nielsen competitor IRI.

Dive Insight:

Nielsen will bring a new measurement of e-commerce sales for CPG brands to market this year. Tapping more than a dozen retailers for sales data, the new offering promises to provide a more accurate and insightful estimate of e-commerce activity.

Companies such as Slice Intelligence and InfoScout offer estimates of e-commerce sales using large-scale panels of consumer receipts and clickstream data. Nielsen believes that actual sales data will provide a better measure of the CPG e-commerce market, which grew 42% last year, according to IRI.

Among the dozen or so retailers providing sales data are the supermarket chain Giant Eagle, Peapod, Target and at least one unnamed warehouse club. Nielsen will combine their data with that of more than 200 retailers sourced from consumer panels, including its own HomeScan and Harris panels, to deliver monthly reports beginning in the second half of the year.

Brands seeking more timely and accurate data will undoubtedly take a look at the Nielsen product, but it remains to be seen whether it will provide a better or more timely measure of e-commerce sales activity.