Consumer intelligence group NIQ reported second-quarter results on August 10, 2026 showing revenue of 1,124.2 million dollars and a 34% rise in revenue from what it calls AI-native solutions, while executives told analysts that a product measuring share of prompt and share of discovery in agent-mediated shopping is scheduled for launch before the end of the year.

The Chicago-headquartered company, listed on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker NIQ since July 2025, published the figures alongside a Form 8-K and a Form 10-Q for the quarter ended June 30, 2026. Total revenue grew 8.0% against the same quarter a year earlier. Organic constant currency growth, the measure the company treats as its core indicator because it strips out acquisitions, disposals and currency movement, came in at 5.8%.

That headline is the least interesting part of the filing for anyone buying media.

The measurement layer moves toward AI agents

Optiq Bridge, the product NIQ describes as connecting its intelligence into enterprise AI systems, is being distributed through the Model Context Protocol. Troy Treangen, the company's Chief AI and Product Officer, set out the schedule during the earnings call.

"Our product for MCP consumption, that's Optiq Bridge, that's the product that we announced at C360," Treangen said. "It's being launched in full kind of product mode here at the very beginning of September with our official launch. We're in beta right now."

The beta covers primarily United States data. According to Treangen, releases scheduled through the remainder of 2026 will extend access to retail measurement in other markets and to consumer panel data, with further releases every few weeks.

MCP has spread quickly through advertising infrastructure. Google released an open-source MCP server for its Ads APIon October 7, 2025. Meta opened its ads MCP server to any developer holding a Meta app on July 16, 2026, removing the custom integration code that had previously been required. The protocol's specification also dropped sessions entirely in its July 28, 2026 release, forcing servers to carry complete context on every call.

What NIQ adds to that pattern is different in kind from a campaign management interface. Retail measurement and consumer panel data are the currency that fast-moving consumer goods manufacturers and their agencies use to settle arguments about share, distribution and price. Exposing that currency to an agent changes who, or what, can ask a question of it.

Pricing for the capability has not been fixed. Jim Peck, Executive Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, was asked directly what advertisers would pay for MCP access.

"We're going to be experimenting with several different kinds of pricing models," Peck said. "Some are consumption-based, some are not."

Share of prompt enters the measurement vocabulary

The second product NIQ flagged for later in 2026 concerns agentic commerce itself. Asked how the company intends to collect data when consumers shop through an agent, Peck described the channel as one more surface to be measured.

"Within that, though, we're also going to measure share of prompt, share of discovery," Peck said. "We will also have share of accuracy of those results, clicks and then ultimately, conversion."

Those five metrics land in a category that currently has no agreed definitions. Trade bodies have spent two years attempting to standardise commerce media measurement, and Australian practitioners recently told an IAB summit that the sector's measurement debt is being incurred at the same moment agentic commerce arrives. Vendor-side work has run in parallel: LiveRamp began piloting agentic AI to close the workflow gap between commerce data and campaign outcomes in June 2026.

NIQ said it is in discussions with multiple partners around the agentic commerce measurement launch. It did not name them.

First retail media client, and an unnamed ad tech buyer

The quarter produced two client wins that sit outside the company's traditional manufacturer base.

Unlimitail, the joint venture between Publicis Groupe and Carrefour, became what NIQ described as its first Activate retail media client, contracted to measure business outcomes across a multi-retailer, multi-country network. Unlimitail has been expanding its third-party retailer base beyond Carrefour, having signed MediaMarktSaturn's first offsite retail media programme in September 2025 across five initial European markets. Carrefour's own strategic plan targets doubling Unlimitail revenue by 2028, against a management description of the current retail media business as fairly limited.

Separately, Peck said a global ad tech platform licensed NIQ purchase data for privacy-safe campaign planning, choosing the company over a direct competitor and traditional panel providers. The platform was not identified.

Both deals extend a distribution strategy visible across the past two years. NIQ launched a global data clean room on Snowflake on October 2, 2025, aimed at first-party data enrichment and outcome measurement. It made GeoPurchase audience segments available inside Adsquare for programmatic and digital out-of-home buying on April 8, 2026, and extended GeoPurchase into Poland, Belgium, Mexico and Indonesia in June 2026, reaching 11 countries. European trade bodies already list the company among attribution and measurement suppliers serving commerce media, alongside dunnhumby, Criteo, Epsilon and LiveRamp.

What the AI numbers actually count

The 34% growth figure applies to revenue from AI-native solutions, which NIQ defines in its investor presentation as the BASES AI suite and Retailer Analytics offerings. That definition matters, because it excludes the newer products announced in June 2026.

Three adoption metrics accompany it. Roughly 51% of the company's top 100 clients use at least one AI-native solution. The number of clients using them grew 64% year to date. More than 80% of AI-native revenue comes from recurring clients.

The ConnectAI charter programme, which places NIQ engineers and data scientists inside client environments, has five signed participants: Purina, a global personal hygiene company, a leading beauty company and two global beverage companies. Only Purina is named. Peck put the pipeline at 49 live opportunities, with retailers expected in the next phase. The investor presentation published the same day describes the position more conservatively, citing five proofs of concept in process.

Data volume grew alongside adoption. The company added approximately 4.3 trillion consumer transaction records per week during the quarter, up 23% from a 3.5 trillion weekly rate a year earlier, across 260 million product items and 10.5 billion product attributes held in a 160 petabyte engine. Client data consumption on the platform rose 25%.

Revenue from the June launches is not in guidance. Peck was explicit that 2026 is a foundation year and that commercial scaling is expected from 2027.

Segments, and a recast that complicates comparison

Americas revenue reached 455.1 million dollars, up 12.1% as reported and 8.3% organic. EMEA reached 507.8 million dollars, up 6.5% reported and 4.9% organic. APAC returned to growth at 161.3 million dollars, up 2.2% reported and 1.9% organic after a negative first half in the prior comparison.

The 10-Q discloses a change that affects those comparisons. Beginning in 2026, South Asia moved from the APAC reportable segment into EMEA, and Global Services and Other revenues moved from EMEA into segments based on geography of service. Prior-period results were adjusted retrospectively.

By product grouping, Intelligence revenue was 905.3 million dollars, growing 5.7% organic. Activation revenue was 218.9 million dollars, growing 6.1% organic, its second consecutive quarter of acceleration. Annualized Intelligence Subscription revenue reached 3,017.6 million dollars, passing three billion dollars for the first time, with net dollar retention of 105% and gross dollar retention of 99%.

MetricQ2 2026Q2 2025
Revenue (millions)1,124.21,040.8
Adjusted EBITDA (millions)261.9214.9
Adjusted EBITDA margin23.3%20.6%
Net loss attributable to NIQ (millions)(30.5)(2.7)
Adjusted EPS0.27(0.01)
Levered free cash flow (millions)74.1(63.2)
Interest expense, net (millions)55.195.2

AI in the cost base

Adjusted EBITDA grew 21.9% to 261.9 million dollars, with margin expanding 270 basis points to 23.3%. According to Peck, productivity gains from AI across data operations, engineering, commercial and support functions contributed roughly half of that expansion. Michael Burwell, Chief Financial Officer, attributed the other half to revenue growth flowing across a cost base that is roughly 80% fixed.

The 2026 restructuring programme, approved in February 2026, targets annualised savings of 70 million to 80 million dollars. The company had incurred approximately 70 million dollars of associated restructuring charges as of year to date, against a total expectation of 65 million to 75 million dollars. Burwell told analysts the company is tracking toward a 75 million dollar cost-to-achieve figure and that cash outlays of 28 million dollars in the first quarter and 24 million dollars in the second leave roughly 50 million dollars to spend, around 70% of it in the third quarter.

Burwell also indicated where further reductions could come from, without setting a target.

"We've had a people-intensive business, and we've got great people," Burwell said. "But we may not need as many. And so as we have turnover, we may not be filling those spots in terms of thinking about it going forward."

Below the operating line

Despite operating income of 65.3 million dollars, NIQ recorded a net loss attributable to the company of 30.5 million dollars. Two items explain the gap. Income tax expense of 37.6 million dollars was charged against pre-tax income of 9.4 million dollars. Foreign currency exchange produced a gain of 0.7 million dollars, against 57.4 million dollars in the prior-year quarter.

Interest expense fell to 55.1 million dollars from 95.2 million dollars, reflecting debt repaid with IPO proceeds and subsequent refinancing. Net debt stood at approximately 3.1 billion dollars, with net leverage at 3.1 times against 3.4 times at the end of the first quarter. S&P Global Ratings upgraded the credit rating to B+ from B.

Levered free cash flow turned positive at 74.1 million dollars, an improvement of 137.3 million dollars year over year. Deferred revenues rose to 369.3 million dollars from 262.0 million dollars at the end of 2025, while trade receivables rose to 852.3 million dollars from 695.6 million dollars.

The YiMian acquisition, completed on June 30, 2026 and covered when NIQ folded the digital shelf and social commerce operation into its platform, cost approximately 33.5 million Chinese yuan, equivalent to roughly 4.9 million dollars.

Two figures that do not reconcile

The transcript contains a number that conflicts with the filings. Burwell told analysts that cash flow from operating activities in the quarter was 140.1 million dollars "versus a use of 80.6 million in Q2 2025." The Form 10-Q, the Form 8-K and the press release all record net cash used in operating activities of 8.6 million dollars for the second quarter of 2025.

Separately, the Form 10-Q discloses that management concluded disclosure controls and procedures were not effective as of June 30, 2026, as a result of a previously reported material weakness in information technology general controls covering user access to the general ledger system and monitoring of approval limits for certain bank accounts. Remediation is described as under way and not complete.

Guidance

Third-quarter guidance calls for revenue of 1,105 million to 1,108 million dollars, organic constant currency growth of 5.2% to 5.5%, adjusted EBITDA of 255 million to 261 million dollars, and adjusted earnings per share of 0.22 to 0.24 dollars.

Full-year guidance was raised to revenue of 4,496 million to 4,510 million dollars, organic constant currency growth of 5.2% to 5.6%, adjusted EBITDA margin of 23.5% to 23.9%, adjusted earnings per share of 1.08 to 1.12 dollars, and levered free cash flow of 245 million to 255 million dollars. The company expects net leverage below three times by year end. Guidance ranges other than organic constant currency include YiMian.

Why this matters for the marketing community

Three consequences follow for media buyers and measurement teams.

The first concerns supply. A retail measurement provider that exposes its data through MCP is placing a decision-grade dataset inside the same interface layer that Google, Meta, Amazon and DoubleVerify have adopted for campaign data. An agency agent built against one of those interfaces can, with modest rework, query another. Whether NIQ prices that access per seat, per query or inside existing contracts is unresolved, and the answer determines whether smaller buyers reach the data at all.

The second concerns definitions. Share of prompt and share of discovery are being introduced by a company that supplies the currency data underpinning category share arguments in fast-moving consumer goods. Competing definitions of the same concepts already circulate from search analytics vendors and trade bodies. A measurement supplier entering that contest with retail sales data attached changes which definition brands can tie to revenue.

The third concerns concentration. Unlimitail's contract makes NIQ a measurement supplier to a network that sells media, in a market where European retail media spending reached 13.7 billion euros in 2024 and where standardisation gaps remain the primary obstacle to scaled investment. Independence of measurement from media sales has been a recurring concern across commerce media. A single supplier holding retail measurement, purchase-based audiences, a clean room, programmatic distribution and outcome measurement for a retail media network occupies several positions at once.

Timeline

Summary

Who: NIQ Global Intelligence plc, listed on the New York Stock Exchange as NIQ, with Executive Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Jim Peck, Chief Financial Officer Michael Burwell, and Chief AI and Product Officer Troy Treangen. Named third parties include Unlimitail, Purina, Ulta Beauty, Snowflake, Lula Commerce, INTAGE HD and S&P Global Ratings.

What: Second-quarter 2026 results showing revenue of 1,124.2 million dollars, up 8.0% as reported and 5.8% in organic constant currency; adjusted EBITDA of 261.9 million dollars, up 21.9%, with margin expanding 270 basis points to 23.3%; a net loss attributable to NIQ of 30.5 million dollars; adjusted earnings per share of 0.27 dollars; levered free cash flow of 74.1 million dollars; annualized Intelligence Subscription revenue passing three billion dollars; and 34% growth in AI-native solutions revenue. Executives disclosed a September launch date for Optiq Bridge over the Model Context Protocol, a forthcoming agentic commerce measurement product covering share of prompt, share of discovery, accuracy, clicks and conversion, and Unlimitail as the first retail media client.

When: Results for the quarter ended June 30, 2026 were released on Monday, August 10, 2026, with the earnings call held the same day. Optiq Bridge is scheduled to launch in full at the beginning of September 2026, and the agentic commerce measurement product later in 2026.

Where: Chicago headquarters, Irish incorporation, three reporting segments covering the Americas, EMEA and APAC, with the MCP beta covering primarily United States data and the Unlimitail contract covering a multi-country European network.

Why: The results matter to advertising and measurement practitioners less for the financial beat than for the distribution decisions attached to it. Exposing retail measurement and consumer panel data through MCP places category-currency data inside the same agent interface layer already adopted by the largest advertising platforms, with pricing still undecided. Introducing share of prompt and share of discovery as measured metrics enters a definitional contest that trade bodies have not settled. Contracting with Unlimitail places a measurement supplier inside a network that sells media, at a point when European commerce media buyers continue to cite standardisation and incrementality proof as the constraint on further budget.