Liquid Death, Olipop, and Poppi each win different AI engines and different query types. The Circana retail data, the 5W Citation Audit breakdown, and what Pepsi and Coke are doing about it.
Poppi — founded 2018 by Allison and Stephen Ellsworth. $500M+ 2024 revenue. Acquired by PepsiCo May 2025 for $1.95B. EPR's canonical Poppi reference and the LaForce / Magrino agency record.
The CPG shelf moved. The AI shelf is the shortlist a consumer receives when asking ChatGPT for category recommendations. The CPG Citation Stack, why NYT Food and Wirecutter set the anchor, why Reddit and Costco's community won CPG, and the brands competing well.
Media monitoring, AI citation tracking, and creator-seeding platforms now sit inside the same digital PR stack. Here is what each category does and which vendors lead it in 2026.
